Malay alphabet

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The modern Malay alphabet or Indonesian alphabet (Brunei, Malaysia and Singapore: Tulisan Rumi, literally "Roman script" or "Roman writing; Indonesia: Aksara Latin, literally "Latin script") consists of the 26 letters of the ISO basic Latin alphabet without any diacritics. [1] It is the more common of the two alphabets used today to write the Malay language, the other being Jawi (a modified Arabic script). The Latin Malay alphabet is the official Malay script in Indonesia (as Indonesian), Malaysia (as Malaysian) and Singapore, while it is co-official with Jawi in Brunei.

Brunei Southeast Asian coastal sovereign state

Brunei, officially the Nation of Brunei, the Abode of Peace, is a country located on the north coast of the island of Borneo in Southeast Asia. Apart from its coastline with the South China Sea, the country is completely surrounded by the Malaysian state of Sarawak. It is separated into two parts by the Sarawak district of Limbang. Brunei is the only sovereign state completely on the island of Borneo; the remainder of the island's territory is divided between the nations of Malaysia and Indonesia. Brunei's population was 423,196 in 2016.

Malaysia Federal constitutional monarchy in Southeast Asia

Malaysia is a country in Southeast Asia. The federal constitutional monarchy consists of 13 states and three federal territories, separated by the South China Sea into two similarly sized regions, Peninsular Malaysia and East Malaysia. Peninsular Malaysia shares a land and maritime border with Thailand and maritime borders with Singapore, Vietnam, and Indonesia. East Malaysia shares land and maritime borders with Brunei and Indonesia and a maritime border with the Philippines and Vietnam. Kuala Lumpur is the national capital and largest city while Putrajaya is the seat of the federal government. With a population of over 30 million, Malaysia is the world's 44th most populous country. The southernmost point of continental Eurasia, Tanjung Piai, is in Malaysia. In the tropics, Malaysia is one of 17 megadiverse countries, with large numbers of endemic species.

Singapore Republic in Southeast Asia

Singapore, officially the Republic of Singapore, is an island city-state in Southeast Asia. It lies one degree north of the equator, at the southern tip of the Malay Peninsula, with Indonesia's Riau Islands to the south and Peninsular Malaysia to the north. Singapore's territory consists of one main island along with 62 other islets. Since independence, extensive land reclamation has increased its total size by 23%. The nation is known for its transition from a developing to a developed country in a single generation under the leadership of its founding Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew.

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Historically, various scripts such as Pallava, Kawi and Rencong were used to write Old Malay, until they were replaced by Jawi with the introduction of Islam. The arrival of European colonial powers brought the Latin alphabet to the Malay Archipelago.

Pallava script Brahmi abugida giving rise to later South and Southeast Asian scripts

The Pallava script, a Brahmic script, was developed under the Pallava dynasty of Southern India around the 6th century of AD. Indian script Grantha and Southeast Asian scripts such as Balinese, Javanese, Kawi, Baybayin, Mon, Burmese, Khmer, Lanna, Thai, Lao and the New Tai Lue alphabet as well as the Sri Lankan Sinhala script are either direct or indirect derivations from the Kadamba-Pallava alphabet.

Kawi script Central and east Javanese script influenced by Nagari and Pallava scripts

Aksara Kawi or Aksara Jawa Kuna is the name given to the writing system originating in Java and used across much of Maritime Southeast Asia from the 8th century to around 1500 AD, with similarities to the Nāgarī script.

Rencong script

Rencong, or "Rentjong," is any native writing system found in central and south Sumatra, including Kerinci, Bengkulu, Palembang and Lampung. These scripts lasted until the 18th century, when the Dutch colonised Indonesia. These scripts were used to write manuscripts in native languages and in Malay, such as the Tanjung Tanah Code of Law. The Malay writing was gradually replaced by the Jawi script, a localized version of the Arabic script.

As the Malay-speaking countries were divided between two colonial administrations (the Dutch and the British), two major different spelling orthographies were developed in the Dutch East Indies and British Malaya respectively, influenced by the orthographies of their respective colonial tongues. The Soewandi Spelling System (or the Republic Spelling System after independence), used in the Dutch East Indies and later in independent Indonesia until 1972, was based on the Dutch alphabet. In 1972, as part of the effort of harmonizing spelling differences between the two countries, Indonesia and Malaysia each adopted a spelling reform plan, called the Perfected Spelling System (Ejaan yang Disempurnakan) in Indonesia and the New Rumi Spelling (Ejaan Rumi Baharu [2] ) in Malaysia. Although the representations of speech sounds are now largely identical in the Indonesian and Malaysian varieties, a number of minor spelling differences remain.

Netherlands Constituent country of the Kingdom of the Netherlands in Europe

The Netherlands is a country located in Northwestern Europe with some overseas territories. In Europe, it consists of twelve provinces that border Germany to the east, Belgium to the south, and the North Sea to the northwest, with maritime borders in the North Sea with Belgium, Germany and the United Kingdom. Together with three island territories in the Caribbean Sea—Bonaire, Sint Eustatius and Saba—it forms a constituent country of the Kingdom of the Netherlands. The official language is Dutch, but a secondary official language in the province of Friesland is West Frisian.

United Kingdom Country in Europe

The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, commonly known as the United Kingdom (UK) or Britain, is a sovereign country located off the north-western coast of the European mainland. The United Kingdom includes the island of Great Britain, the north-eastern part of the island of Ireland, and many smaller islands. Northern Ireland is the only part of the United Kingdom that shares a land border with another sovereign state, the Republic of Ireland. Apart from this land border, the United Kingdom is surrounded by the Atlantic Ocean, with the North Sea to the east, the English Channel to the south and the Celtic Sea to the south-west, giving it the 12th-longest coastline in the world. The Irish Sea separates Great Britain and Ireland. The United Kingdom's 242,500 square kilometres (93,600 sq mi) were home to an estimated 66.0 million inhabitants in 2017.

Dutch East Indies Dutch colony between 1816-1949, present-day Indonesia

The Dutch East Indies was a Dutch colony consisting of what is now Indonesia. It was formed from the nationalised colonies of the Dutch East India Company, which came under the administration of the Dutch government in 1800.

Letter names and pronunciations

New Rumi Spelling (Malay: Ejaan Rumi Baharu), Enhanced Indonesian Spelling System (Indonesian: Ejaan Yang Disempurnakan, abbreviated EYD), also called the Perfected Spelling System (PSS).

New Rumi Spelling is the most recent spelling reform of Rumi script in Malaysia. The spelling reform was jointly initiated by Malaysia and Indonesia, and it was adopted in 1972 to officially replace the Za'aba Spelling previously used in Malaysia, Singapore and Brunei.

The Enhanced Spelling System, also called the Perfected Spelling System (PSS), and later called the Enhanced Indonesian Spelling System, and latest update called simply Indonesian Spelling System is the spelling system used for the Indonesian language. It is an orthography that is released in 1972 to replace the Republican Spelling System. The aim was greater harmonization of the Indonesian and Malay-language orthographies.

Indonesian/Malay Latin alphabet
Number1234568891011121314151617181920212223242526
Upper case A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z
Lower case abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz
IPA phoneme a b d e f g h i k l m n o p q ~ k r s t u v w k s j z

The names of letters differ between Indonesia and rest of the Malay-speaking countries. Indonesia follows the letter names of the Dutch alphabet, while Malaysia, Brunei and Singapore follow the English alphabet. Regardless of the letter names, however, the letters represent the same sounds in all Malay-speaking countries. The Malay alphabet has a phonemic orthography; words are spelled the way they are pronounced, with few exceptions. The letters Q, V and X are rarely encountered, being chiefly used for writing loanwords.

English alphabet Latin alphabet consisting of 26 letters, each having an uppercase and a lowercase form

The modern English alphabet is a Latin alphabet consisting of 26 letters, each having an upper- and lower-case form. It originated around the 7th century from the Latin script. Since then, letters have been added or removed to give the current Modern English alphabet of 26 letters :

In linguistics, a phonemic orthography is an orthography in which the graphemes correspond to the phonemes of the language. Natural languages rarely have perfectly phonemic orthographies; a high degree of grapheme-phoneme correspondence can be expected in orthographies based on alphabetic writing systems, but they differ in how complete this correspondence is. English orthography, for example, is alphabetic but highly nonphonemic; it was once mostly phonemic during the Middle English stage, when the modern spellings originated, but spoken English changed rapidly while the orthography was much more stable, resulting in the modern nonphonemic situation. However, because of their relatively recent modernizations when compared to English, the Italian, Turkish, Spanish, Finnish, Czech, Latvian and Polish orthographic systems come much closer to being consistent phonemic representations.

A loanword is a word adopted from one language and incorporated into another language without translation. This is in contrast to cognates, which are words in two or more languages that are similar because they share an etymological origin, and calques, which involve translation.

LetterName (in IPA)Sound
IndonesiaMalaysia, Brunei and SingaporeIPAEnglish equivalent
Malaysia, Brunei, SingaporeIndonesia
Aaa (/a/)e (/e/)/a/a as in father
/ə/-a as in sofa
Bb (/be/)bi (/bi/)/b/b as in bed
Cc (/t͡ʃe/ or /se/)si (/si/)/t͡ʃ/ch as in check
Dd (/de/)di (/di/)/d/d as in day
Eeé (/e/)i (/i/)/ə/e as in tolerant
/e/e as in hey
/e//ɪ/e as in packet
/ɛ/e as in get
Fféf (/ef/)éf (/ef/)/f/f as in effort
Gg (/ge/)ji (/d͡ʒi/)/ɡ/g as in gain
Hhha (/ha/)héc (/het͡ʃ/)/h/h as in harm
Iii (/i/)ai (/ai̯/)/i/i as in machine, but shorter
/e//ɪ/i as in igloo
Jj (/d͡ʒe/) (/d͡ʒe/)/d͡ʒ/j as in jam
Kkka (/ka/) (/ke/)/k/unaspirated k as in skate
Llél (/el/)él (/el/)/l/l as in let
Mmém (/em/)ém (/em/)/m/m as in mall
Nnén (/en/)én (/en/)/n/n as in net
Ooo (/o/)o (/o/)/o/o as in owe
/o//ʊ/
/ɔ/o as in bought, but shorter
Pp (/pe/)pi (/pi/)/p/unaspirated p as in speak
Qqki (/ki/)kiu (/kiu/ or /kju/)/q/ ~ /k/q as in Qatar
Rrér (/er/)ar (/ar/ or /a:/)/r/Spanish rr as in puerro
Ssés (/es/)és (/es/)/s/s as in sun
Tt (/te/)ti (/ti/)/t/unaspirated t as in still
Uuu (/u/)yu (/ju/)/u/u as in rule, but shorter
/o//ʊ/oo as in foot
Vv (/ve/ or /fe/)vi (/vi/)/v/ ~ /f/v as in van
Ww (/we/)dabel yu (/dabəlˈju/)/w/w as in wet
Xxéks (/eks/)éks (/eks/)/ks/x as in box
/z//s/x as in xenon
Yy (/je/)wai (/wai̯/)/j/y as in yarn
Zzzét (/zet/)zed (/zed/)/z/z as in zebra

* Many vowels are pronounced (and were formerly spelt) differently in Peninsular Malaysia and Sumatra (where Malay is native): tujuh is pronounced (and was spelt) tujoh, rambut as rambot, kain as kaen, pilih as pileh, etc., [e] and [o] are also allophones of /i/ and /u/ in closed final syllables in peninsular Malaysian and Sumatran. Many vowels were pronounced and formerly spelt differently that way also in East Malaysia, Brunei, and Indonesia.

In addition, there are digraphs that are not considered separate letters of the alphabet: [3]

Digraph (orthography) pair of characters used to write one phoneme

A digraph or digram is a pair of characters used in the orthography of a language to write either a single phoneme, or a sequence of phonemes that does not correspond to the normal values of the two characters combined.

DigraphSound
IPANotes
Malaysia, Brunei and SingaporeIndonesia
ai/ai̯/uy as in buy
au/au̯/ou as in ouch
oi/oi̯//ʊi̯/oy as in boy
gh/ɣ/ ~ /x/similar to Dutch and German ch, but voiced
kh/x/ch as in loch
ng/ŋ/ng as in sing
ny/ɲ/Spanish ñ; similar to ny as in canyon with a nasal sound
sy/ʃ/sh as in shoe

Pre-1972 Spelling System

1927 Za'aba and 1947 Soewandi Spelling Systems

Malaysia, Brunei and Singapore: 1927 Za'aba Spelling System
Upper case A Ă B C D E Ĕ F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z
Lower case aăbcdeĕfghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz
Indonesia: 1901 Van Ophuijsen Spelling System and 1947 Soewandi Spelling System
Upper case A B C D E É F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T Oe(1901)/ U(1947) V W X Y Z
Lower case abcdeéfghijklmnopqrstoe(1901)/ u(1947)vwxyz
LetterSoundPost-1972 Replacement
1927 Za'aba Spelling System
(Malaysia, Brunei, Singapore)
1901 Van Ophuijsen Spelling System,
1947 Soewandi Spelling System
(Indonesia)
Malaysia, Brunei, SingaporeIndonesia
ă/ə/-e-
ch/t͡ʃ//x/ckh
dh/d//-d-
dj-/d͡ʒ/-j
dz/z/-d-
e-/ə/-e
/e/-e-
/ɛ/-e-
é-/e/-e
-/ɪ/-e
ĕ/ə/-e-
ï/i/
(monophthong)
-i-
j-/j/-y
nj-/ɲ/-ny
oe-/u/-u
sh/ʃ/-sy-
sj-/ʃ/-sy
th/s/-s-
tj-/t͡ʃ/-c

See also

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References

  1. Before a spelling reform in 1972, Indonesia would disambiguate /e/ as é and /ə/ as e, and Malaysia /e/ as e and /ə/ as ĕ. The spelling reform removed the diacritics and use e to represent both /e/ and /ə/.
  2. Pusat Rujukan Persuratan Melayu (2014), Ejaan Rumi Baharu Bahasa Malaysia , retrieved 2014-10-04
  3. "Malay (Bahasa Melayu / بهاس ملايو)". www.omniglot.com.