Consonant Occurrence
All the 18 consonants can occur in initial position except for /h/, which usually only occurs in final position. As a result, words that have initial /h/ in Standard Malay, such as hutan /hutan/ ‘forest’ and hitam /hitam/ ‘black’ are utan /utan/ and itam /itam/ respectively in Brunei Malay.
In addition, [h] may be inserted between two identical vowels in words such as saat ‘second’, which may be pronounced [sahat] (Mataim, 2007) and tuut ‘knee’, which may be [tuhut] (Clynes, 2001). In fact, in the passage, matahari ‘sun’ might be analysed as /mataari/ and the [h] is inserted between the two consecutive /a/ vowels, especially as the word is a compound of mata ‘eye’ + ari ‘day’. However, we should note that the [h] in matahari is obligatory. The optional insertion of [h] between two vowels contrasts with Standard Malay, in which a glottal stop is typically inserted in the middle of words such as saat (Clynes & Deterding 2011).
Although /h/ is clearly articulated at the end of ngalih, rumah and labih in the word list above and all three tokens of jubah ‘cloak’ in the passage, it is omitted from the end of iatah ‘is’ in the reading of the passage, possibly because it is a function word.
All the consonants can occur in final position except the palatal sounds /tʃ dʒ ɲ/ and the voiced plosives /b d ɡ/. These sounds are only found in final position in a few loanwords such kabab /kabab/ ‘kebab’ (Clynes 2001).