In my previous post, I discussed the number of monophthong vowels in Brunei Malay and suggested there are just three: /i, a, u/.
How about diphthongs? How many diphthongs does Brunei Malay have?
Some people would say three, [ai], [au], [oi]. Illustrative words are:
- garai ('food stall')
- palau ('dazed')
- baloi ('worthwhile')
However, note that these three diphthongs can only occur at the end of a word. In cases in which they occur in the middle of a word (e.g. kain 'cloth', daun 'leaf'), these words actually have two syllables, so we can say there is a sequence of two monophthong vowels.
If a diphthong can only occur at the end of a word, with no following consonant, then we might say that it is a monophthong followed by an approximant. If words such as yang ('which') and wang ('money') can start with an approximant, we can also say that garai and palau end with an approximant.On this basis, we analyse the three words above as: /garaj/, /palaw/ and /baluj/. So there are no diphthongs in Brunei Malay.
For further discussion of diphthongs in Brunei Malay and the chance to listen to these words, see here.