The modern Malay and Indonesian alphabet (

Brunei Brunei, officially Brunei Darussalam, is a country in Southeast Asia, situated on the northern coast of the island of Borneo. Apart from its coastline on the South China Sea, it is completely surrounded by the Malaysian state of Sarawak, with ...

Malaysia Malaysia is a country in Southeast Asia. Featuring the Tanjung Piai, southernmost point of continental Eurasia, it is a federation, federal constitutional monarchy consisting of States and federal territories of Malaysia, 13 states and thre ...

and

Singapore Singapore, officially the Republic of Singapore, is an island country and city-state in Southeast Asia. The country's territory comprises one main island, 63 satellite islands and islets, and one outlying islet. It is about one degree ...

: , , ) consists of the 26 letters of the

ISO basic Latin alphabet The ISO basic Latin alphabet is an international standard (beginning with ISO/IEC 646) for a Latin-script alphabet that consists of two sets (uppercase and lowercase) of 26 letters, codified in various national and international standards and u ...

. It is the more common of the two alphabets used today to write the

Malay language Malay ( , ; , Jawi alphabet, Jawi: ) is an Austronesian languages, Austronesian language spoken primarily by Malays (ethnic group), Malays in several islands of Maritime Southeast Asia and the Malay Peninsula on the mainland Asia. The lang ...

, the other being Jawi (a modified

Arabic script The Arabic script is the writing system used for Arabic (Arabic alphabet) and several other languages of Asia and Africa. It is the second-most widely used alphabetic writing system in the world (after the Latin script), the second-most widel ...

). The Latin Malay alphabet is the official Malay script in

Indonesia Indonesia, officially the Republic of Indonesia, is a country in Southeast Asia and Oceania, between the Indian Ocean, Indian and Pacific Ocean, Pacific oceans. Comprising over List of islands of Indonesia, 17,000 islands, including Sumatra, ...

(as Indonesian),

(also called Malaysian) and

, while it is co-official with Jawi in

. Historically, various scripts such as

Pallava The Pallava dynasty existed from 275 CE to 897 CE, ruling a significant portion of South India, the Deccan, also known as Tondaimandalam. The Pallavas played a crucial role in shaping in particular southern Indian history and heritage. The ...

, Kawi and Rencong or Surat Ulu were used to write Old Malay, until they were replaced by Jawi during

Islam Islam is an Abrahamic religions, Abrahamic monotheistic religion based on the Quran, and the teachings of Muhammad. Adherents of Islam are called Muslims, who are estimated to number Islam by country, 2 billion worldwide and are the world ...

missionary A missionary is a member of a Religious denomination, religious group who is sent into an area in order to promote its faith or provide services to people, such as education, literacy, social justice, health care, and economic development.Thoma ...

missions in the

Malay Archipelago The Malay Archipelago is the archipelago between Mainland Southeast Asia and Australia, and is also called Insulindia or the Indo-Australian Archipelago. The name was taken from the 19th-century European concept of a Malay race, later based ...

. The arrival of

Europe Europe is a continent located entirely in the Northern Hemisphere and mostly in the Eastern Hemisphere. It is bordered by the Arctic Ocean to the north, the Atlantic Ocean to the west, the Mediterranean Sea to the south, and Asia to the east ...

an colonial powers brought the Latin alphabet to the Malay Archipelago. As the Malay-speaking countries were divided between two colonial administrations (the Dutch and the

British British may refer to: Peoples, culture, and language * British people, nationals or natives of the United Kingdom, British Overseas Territories and Crown Dependencies. * British national identity, the characteristics of British people and culture ...

), two major different spelling orthographies were developed in the

Dutch East Indies The Dutch East Indies, also known as the Netherlands East Indies (; ), was a Dutch Empire, Dutch colony with territory mostly comprising the modern state of Indonesia, which Proclamation of Indonesian Independence, declared independence on 17 Au ...

and British Malaya respectively, influenced by the orthographies of their respective colonial tongues. The Van Ophuijsen Spelling System used in the Dutch East Indies and later Indonesia was based on the Dutch alphabet. It was replaced by the simpler Republican Spelling System in 1947. 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 () in Indonesia and the New Rumi Spelling () in Malaysia. Although the representations of speech sounds are now largely identical in Indonesian and other neighbouring Malay varieties, a number of minor spelling differences remain.

Letter names and pronunciations

Enhanced Indonesian Spelling System (, abbreviated as EYD), New Rumi Spelling (). The Malay alphabet has a phonemic orthography; words are spelled the way they are pronounced, with a notable defectiveness: /ə/ and /e/ are both written as E/e. The names of the letters, however, differ between

and rest of the Malay-speaking countries; while Malaysia, Brunei and Singapore follow the letter names of the

English alphabet Modern English is written with a Latin-script alphabet consisting of 26 Letter (alphabet), letters, with each having both uppercase and lowercase forms. The word ''alphabet'' is a Compound (linguistics), compound of ''alpha'' and ''beta'', t ...

largely follows the letter names of the Dutch alphabet, making its implementation more faithful to the actual phonemic values of each letter. The letters otherwise represent the same sounds in all Malay-speaking countries. The letters F, Q, V, X and Z are not used in spelling native Malay/Indonesian words, the letters F and Z is also exclusively used in proper names only, e.g. ''Rizki'' or Fakfak. F and Z occur in

loanword A loanword (also a loan word, loan-word) is a word at least partly assimilated from one language (the donor language) into another language (the recipient or target language), through the process of borrowing. Borrowing is a metaphorical term t ...

s from Arabic (e. g. ''fatah'' 'conquest, opening', ''zaman'' 'era, period, time') and from European languages (e. g. ''faktor'' 'factor', ''zoologi'' 'zoology'). V is used in loanwords from European languages (e. g. ''visa'' 'visa', ''provinsi'' 'province'). The letter Q is very rare: it is used for Arabic ﻕ in some loanwords, particularly related to religion: ''Qur'an, Al-Qur'an'' (spelling these words with the apostrophe is recommended by the Indonesian Ministry of Religion, the variants ''Quran'' and ''Alquran'' are deprecated; Malaysia uses ''Quran, Al-Quran''), ''qari/qariah'' 'male/female Quran reader', ''qanun'' ' law established by Muslim sovereigns or by Aceh autonomous provincial government' (also qanun (instrument)). But many loanwords from Arabic words with ﻕ use ''k'' instead: ''makam'' 'tomb', ''mutlak'' 'absolute, complete'. Some words are spelled with ''q'' in Malaysia but with ''k'' in Indonesia: ''qasidah/kasidah'' ' qasida'. European loanwords use the letter ''k'' instead of ''q'': ''kualiti'' (Malaysian)/''kualitas'' (Indonesian) 'quality', ''frekuensi'' 'frequency'. The letter X is also very rare: it is used at the beginning of loanwords, e. g. ''xilofon'' 'xylophone', but replaced by ''ks'' at the middle and at the end of loanwords: ''taksi'' 'taxi', ''lateks'' 'latex', ''teks'' 'text' (some consonant clusters are regularly simplified at the end of loanwords: ''-st>-s, -nt>-n, -kt>-k''). * 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., and 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:

Previous spelling systems

Pre-1972 British Malaya and Borneo/Brunei, Malaysia and Singapore orthography

Pre-1972 Dutch East Indies/Indonesia orthography

Comparison table

References

External links

Malay alphabet

Pedoman Umum Ejaan Bahasa Indonesia (PUEBI)

Pedoman Umum Ejaan Bahasa Melayu
{{Language alphabets Latin alphabets Malay language Indonesian language