The Blukar-Covered Hills

I was recently researching the 1956 kidnapping of a distant relative and was interested to see in the newspaper account (Straits Times, 24 March 1956) that a police shootout left two of his kidnappers dead, "deep in the blukar-covered Mandai hills".

Belukar is a Malay word meaning "brushwood, bushes, underwood, thicket". It seems to have been so current in the English of colonial Singapore that its use did not require a gloss.

Shinozaki Mamoru, the "Japanese Schindler" who was in Singapore from 1938 to just after the war, knew the word. He writes of the wartime settlement of Endau, "When the big trees had been cut we waited a few days for the timber to dry, then we set fire to them. There were clouds of smoke everywhere; the smouldering belukar chased out the wild pigs and monkeys."  (Syonan—My Story [Singapore: Marshall Cavendish, 2011; first published 1975], p.119)

The word has certainly now fallen into disuse. It is not in the Singlish Dictionary, and I had never heard it in my life until reading it in the abovementioned article. I wonder if, partly, the demise of the word in Singapore English has to do with the fact that the British tended to borrow more Malay words than Chinese, for the simple reason that they were easier to pronounce. Then, when they departed, they took these words away with them. The word may have been well known to colonial types, but not much used by local Chinese. I know that is a very simplistic way to describe what was likely a fairly complex linguistic process, but I hope readers will sort of know what I mean.

Of course, the real reason behind the obsolescence of the word in Singapore English is that those hills which were once covered in belukar are now paved over with heartlands malls.