The consonants of Standard Malay and also Indonesian are shown below. Non-native consonants that only occur in borrowed words, principally from Arabic and English, are shown in parentheses. Some analyses list 19 "primary consonants" for Malay as the 18 symbols that are not in parentheses in the table as well as the glottal stop. Orthographic note: The sounds are represented orthographically by their symbols as above, except:
is written before a vowel, before and
is written
the glottal stop is written as a final or an apostrophe
is written
is written
is written
is written
is written
is written
is written and transcribed into
is written and transcribed into. Before 1972, this sound was written in Standard Malay.
Notes
,, are unaspirated, as in the Romance languages, or as in English spy, sty, sky. In word-final position, they are often unreleased, with final generally being realised as a glottal stop in native words. There is no liaison, that is, no audible release even when followed by a vowel in another word, as in kulit ubi, though they are pronounced as a normal medial consonant when followed by a suffix.
The glottal stop may be represented by an apostrophe in Arabic derived words such as Al Qur'an.
is pronounced clearly between like vowels, as in Pahang. Elsewhere it is a very light sound, and is frequently silent, as in hutan ~ utan, sahut ~ saut. The exception to this tendency is initial from Arabic loans such as hakim.
varies significantly across dialects. In addition, its position relative to schwa is ambiguous: kertas may be pronounced or. The trill is sometimes reduced to a single vibration when single, making it phonetically a flap, so that the pronunciation of a single varies between trill, flap and, in some instances, postalveolar approximant .
,,,, and only appear in loanwords. Some speakers pronounce in loanwords as, otherwise it is. can also be an allophone of before voiced consonants. Since and are written identically in Malay, as with and, and tend to only occur in speakers who speak the source language the words are loaned from and are aware whether the sound was originally dental or alveolar.
Loans from Arabic:
Phonemes which occur only in Arabic loans may be pronounced distinctly by speakers who know Arabic, otherwise they tend to be substituted with native sounds.
Important in the derivation of Malay verbs and nouns is the assimilation of the nasal consonant at the end of the derivational prefixes meng-, a verbal prefix, and peng-, a nominal prefix. The nasal segment is dropped before sonorant consonants. It is retained before and assimilates to obstruent consonants: labial before labial, alveolar before alveolar, post-alveolar before and, velar before other sounds. In addition, following voiceless obstruents, apart from , are dropped. That is, meng- produces the following derivations:
Vowels
It is usually said that there are six vowels in Standard Malay and Indonesian. These six vowels are shown in the table below. However, other analyses set up a system with other vowels, particularly the open-mid vowels and.
Front
Central
Back
Close
Mid
Open
Front
Central
Back
Close
i
u
Close-Mid
é
ê
o
Open-Mid
è
ê
o
Open
a
Phonological notes:
One source of variation in Malay is whether final in open final syllables of root morphemes is pronounced as or as. So called 'a varieties', such as Indonesian or the varieties of Sarawak, Sabah or Brunei, pronounce it as, while 'schwa varieties' such as peninsular Malaysian and the varieties of Singapore and Sumatra pronounce it as. In schwa varieties, of the penultimate syllable is also modified if it is followed by, as in usaha. does not change to in singing.
In closed final syllables of root morphemes, the front vowel and back vowel are usually pronounced as and, respectively, in Malaysian and Malay of Singapore and Sumatra, and and in Indonesian.
The above allophony notwithstanding, the vowels and must be accorded phonemic status, as they occur in native words in all Malay dialects and in Arabic, Persian, Portuguese, English, Dutch, and Javanese loan words, and in foreign names. and may vary between different speakers as they are popularly pronounced as mid in Malaysian and close-mid in Indonesian. and are pronounced the same in Brunei and East Malaysia.
Some words borrowed from European languages have the vowels and, such as pek and kos . Words borrowed earlier have a more nativized pronunciation, such as pesta, which is pronounced. In Indonesian, and are allophones of and in closed final syllables.
Some district dialects differentiate close-mid and open-mid vowels. Examples are in the Kedahan dialect:
#
#
is an occasional allophone of after or before more carefully pronounced consonants from Arabic words. Example: qari.
Some district dialects differentiate open front and back vowels. Example: .
There is also a in Indonesian, but is an allophone of as the second vowel in a hiatus such as air , but see below.
The vowels ⟨é⟩, ⟨è⟩ and ⟨ê⟩ are commonly written without diacritics in Indonesian as ⟨e⟩. The inclusion of diacritics is for clarity, as in a dictionary.
Diphthongs
Some analyses claim that Malay has three native diphthong phonemes only in open syllables; they are:
: kedai, pandai
: kerbau
: dodoi, amboi
Others assume that these "diphthongs" are actually a monophthong followed by an approximant, so represents, represents, and represents . On this basis, there are no phonological diphthongs in Malay. Words borrowed from English with, such as Mei and esei are pronounced with. This feature also happens to English which becomes. Diphthongs are differentiated from two vowels in two syllables, such as:
: e.g.
rai , air
:
bau , laut Even if it is not differentiated in modern Rumi spelling, diphthongs and two vowels are differentiated in the spelling in Jawi, where a vowel hiatus is indicated by the symbol hamzah, for example: لاءوت laut. The vowel hiatuses below are two different vowels but pronounced as diphthongs.
: meriah
: liur
: luar
: kelui
Stress
Malay has light stress that falls on either the final or penultimate syllable, depending on regional variations as well as the presence of the schwa in a word. It is generally the penultimate syllable that is stressed, unless its vowel is a schwa. If the penult has a schwa, then stress moves to the ante-penultimate syllable if there is one, even if that syllable has a schwa as well; if the word is disyllabic, the stress is final. In disyllabic words with a closed penultimate syllable, such as tinggal and rantai, stress falls on the penult. However, there is some disagreement among linguists over whether stress is phonemic, with some analyses suggesting that there is no underlying stress in Malay.
Rhythm
The classification of languages based on rhythm can be problematic. Nevertheless, acoustic measurements suggest that Malay has more syllable-based rhythm than British English, even though doubts remain about whether the syllable is the appropriate unit for the study of Malay prosody.
Syllable structure
Most of the native lexicon is based on disyllabic root morphemes, with a small percentage of monosyllabic and trisyllabic roots. However, with the widespread occurrence of prefixes and suffixes, many words of five or more syllables are found. Syllables are basically consonant–vowel–consonant, where the V is a monophthong and the final C may be an approximant, either or.
