Malay orthography

The modern Malay and Indonesian alphabet consists of the 26 letters of the ISO basic [Latin alphabet]. It is the more common of the two alphabets used today to write the Malay language, the other being Jawi. The Latin Malay alphabet is the official Malay script in Indonesia, Malaysia and Singapore, while it is co-official with Jawi in Brunei.
Historically, various scripts such as Pallava, Kawi and Rencong or Surat Ulu were used to write Old Malay, until they were replaced by Jawi during Islamic missionary missions in the Malay Archipelago.
The arrival of European colonial powers brought the Latin alphabet to the Malay Archipelago. As the Malay-speaking countries were divided between two colonial administrations, 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 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, New Rumi Spelling.

Number

Upper case

Lower case

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 Indonesia and rest of the Malay-speaking countries; while Malaysia, Brunei and Singapore follow the letter names of the English alphabet, Indonesia 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 loanwords from Arabic and from European languages. V is used in loanwords from European languages. The letter Q is very rare: it is used for Arabic ﻕ in some loanwords, particularly related to religion: Qur'an, Al-Qur'an, qari/qariah 'male/female Quran reader', qanun 'law established by Muslim sovereigns or by Aceh autonomous provincial government'. 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 /kualitas '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'.
* Many vowels are pronounced differently in Peninsular Malaysia and Sumatra : tujuh is pronounced 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

Upper case

Lower case