"This paper discusses how the concept of ?bilingualism? can
be used to reflect changes within Bruneian society since the
1940?s. It argues that within the context of a linguistically
diverse population, the various indigenous groups of Brunei
used to speak their own traditional languages, but eventually
learned to speak the language of the politically dominant
Malays. The Malay language became a necessary additional
language, hence leading to a population which could speak
their own languages, alongside the Malay language. But the
rise of schools teaching in English in the 1970?s began to
sow seeds of a different kind of bilingualism, encouraged by
language shift processes among ethnic minority groups."
