Malay phonology

Malay 'phonology' is based on the pronunciation of the two standard varieties of Malay, Standard Malay and Indonesian. The former is the official language of Brunei and Malaysia, and one of four in Singapore, while the latter is the official language of Indonesia, and a working language in Timor Leste.
There are two main varieties of standard Malay pronunciation, -varieties where word-final as in the word buka 'to open' is pronounced as and word-final as in the word sabar 'patient' is not silent, and schwa-varieties where word-final is pronounced as schwa and word-final is silent except when a vowel-initial suffix is attached. This means buka and sabar would be pronounced as and in -varieties, but as and in schwa-varieties.
-varieties are spoken in Brunei, East Malaysia, Indonesia and northwestern Peninsular Malaysia, while schwa-varieties are spoken in the other parts of Peninsular Malaysia, including the Malaysian capital, Kuala Lumpur and in Singapore. Schwa-varieties predominate in the Malaysian media, while a separate artifical Baku pronunciation standard which follows a prescriptive 'pronounce as it is spelt' approach to pronunciation is officially used and enforced in Singapore. The Baku pronunciation standard is distinct from -varieties but aligns with them in how word-final and are treated.

Consonants

The consonants of Standard Malay and Indonesian are shown below. Non-native consonants that only occur in borrowed words, principally from Arabic, Dutch, English and Sanskrit, 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 as before a vowel and as before and.
is written as.
is written as syllable-final or an apostrophe.
is written as.
* Before 1972, this sound was written as in Standard Malay and as in Indonesian.
is written as.
* Before 1972, this sound was written as in Indonesian.
is written as.
* Before 1972, this sound was written as in Indonesian.
is written as.
* Before 1972, this sound was written as in Standard Malay and as in Indonesian.
is written as.
* Before 1972, this sound was written as ⟨ch⟩ in Indonesian.
is written as.
* This digraph corresponds to in Indonesian.
is written as or.
is written as.
* Before 1972, this sound was written as or in Standard Malay.
is written.
* Before 1972, this sound was written as or in Standard Malay.

Notes

,, are unaspirated, as in the Romance languages, or as in English spy, sty, sky. In syllable codas, they are usually unreleased, with final generally being realised as a glottal stop in native words in Malaysian Malay but as velar or uvular stops in Bruneian Standard Malay. There is generally no liaison, that is, no audible release even when followed by a vowel in another word, as in kulit ubi 'tapioca skins', though they are pronounced as a normal medial consonant when followed by a suffix.
// is dental or supradental in most varieties of Malay and in Indonesian, but not in Brunei Malay where it is alveolar.
At prefix-stem boundaries, when the prefix ends in a vowel and the stem word starts with a vowel, a glottal stop is epenthesized as a way of avoiding vowel hiatus, so a word like diangkat 'to be lifted' would be pronounced as.
At stem-suffix boundaries:
*When the stem ends in and a vowel-initial suffix is added, a homorganic glide, respectively is epenthesized between the stem and the suffix. If the stem instead ends in, a glottal stop is inserted. This means rayuan 'complaint' and hentian 'a stop' would be pronounced as and with the epenthesized and, while cubaan 'attempt' would be pronounced as with the epenthesized. This applies to when the stem ends in the dipthongs as well so a word like pakaian 'clothes' is pronounced as.
*When the stem ends in any consonant with the exception of and a vowel-initial suffix is added, according to Tajul and Suraiya, the consonant is geminated. This results in pilihan 'option' being pronounced as. When the stem ends in as in tindakan 'action', the is phonologically geminated resulting in /tindakkan/, but as in the syllable coda is pronounced as a glottal stop, phonetically, there is no geminate in the derived term, with the word being pronounced as.
The glottal stop may be represented by an apostrophe in Arabic-derived words such as Al Qur'an. In some words like diangkat 'to be lifted' that are derived from vowel-initial words with a vowel-ending prefix, the glottal stop is not reflected in writing.
is pronounced clearly between like vowels, as in dahan 'tree branch'. Elsewhere it is a very light sound, and is frequently silent, as in ~ 'forest', ~ 'answer', ~ 'beautiful'. The exception to this tendency is initial from Arabic loans such as 'judge'.
varies significantly across dialects. In addition, its position relative to schwa is ambiguous: kertas 'paper' 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, approximant, possibly influenced by English in Malaysia, Singapore, and Brunei. In word-final position, is audible in -varieties and in the Baku pronunciation standard, but silent in schwa-varieties.
* In schwa-varieties, word-final is pronounced when a vowel-initial suffix is attached so while cabar may be pronounced as with the silent, when the -an suffix is added to get cabaran 'challenge', the word is pronounced with the not silent. This has led some analyses to refer to the silent word-final as a 'floating ' which requires that the pronunciation of cabar in schwa-varieties be phonemically transcribed as rather than as to indicate the presence of the floating. This floating is also found in the prefixes per- and ber-.
* Due to the influence of Baku pronunciation and spelling, in schwa-varieties, word-final may be pronounced even in situations where it usually isn't. This can be heard, for instance, in the schwa-variety speech of some RTM broadcasters.
Voiced stops do not occur in final position in native words. In loanwords, and are generally devoiced in final position to conform with the native phonological structure. Some pronunciation guides consider this devoicing nonstandard and prescribe to pronounce final b and d as written, i.e. voiced.
,,,,, and only appear in loanwords. Some speakers pronounce in loanwords as, otherwise it is. can also be an allophone of before voiced consonants, although this is rare. Since and are written identically in Malay, as with and and and,, and tend to only occur in speakers who speak the source languages the words are loaned from and are aware of the original pronunciations of the words.
The affricates are variously described as /, /, or / in the literature.
Hoogervorst argues that initial and did not exist in Old Malay and were respectively substituted with and until the instilling of learning Arabic through eventual spread Islamic education amongst local populations.

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.

Distinct	Assimilated	Example
		Selasa 'Tuesday'
		izin 'permission'
	,	zohor, lohor 'noon prayer'
	,	reda, rela 'willing'
	,	khabar خَبَرْ, kabar 'news'
		logat 'dialect'
		makam 'grave'
		saat سَاعَة 'second'

Nasal assimilation

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, except when before causative prefix where the first consonant is kept. This 'phoneme loss rule' manifests as a consonant mutation, often mnemonically termed as kaidah KPST in Indonesian.

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

Notes

As mentioned at the top of the page, one main source of variation in standard Malay pronunciation is in whether final in open final syllables of root morphemes is pronounced as or as schwa. The former quality is employed by '-varieties', found in Indonesian and those of Brunei, Sabah, Sarawak and northwestern Peninsular Malaysia, and the latter is employed by 'schwa-varieties' which is found in all the other parts of Peninsular Malaysia including the Malaysian capital, Kuala Lumpur and partly in Singapore. In schwa-varieties, of the penultimate syllable is also modified if it is followed by, as in usaha. This final difference is neutralized to when a suffix that starts with a vowel is added on, so the word bacaan 'act of reading' is pronounced as in both and schwa-varieties even though the word baca by itself would be pronounced as in schwa-varieties.
* In poem declamations and in singing, speakers of schwa-varieties often switch to an -variety-type accent.
One other difference between and schwa-varieties is in the qualities of the and. In -varieties, and are opener, approaching the qualities of and so that words like belek 'to inspect' and botol 'bottle' would be pronounced as and in -varieties while they are pronounced as and in schwa-varieties.According to Adelaar, standard Malay and do not contrast in closed-final syllables and can experience non-phonemic lowering of various degrees, as long as they are not higher than the vowel in the penultimate syllable if that vowel is :
* In Bruneian Standard Malay, in agreement with Adelaar, they can have mid or even open realisations as long as they are not higher than the vowel in the preceding syllable. This means giling 'to roll' and burung 'bird' can be pronounced as and, while geleng 'shake' and borong 'buy in bulk' can only be pronounced as and and not as and.
* In Indonesian, closed final syllable and often only get realised as and while closed final and often get realized as and.
* In schwa-varieties, according to Mukhlis & Wee, closed final syllable are pronounced the same as as except in some loanwords such as aiskrim 'ice cream' and kasus 'case' and a few native words for some speakers such as putus 'to snap', while according to Asmah, closed final syllable are pronounced as only before silent word-final whereas before other consonants, they are lowered but do not merge with, with a merger in these environments according to her being indicative of Johor dialectal speech rather than standard schwa-variety speech.
* In Baku pronunciation, no allophonic lowering of closed-final occurs.
Assuming Adelaar's view above that and do not contrast in closed-final syllables, the vowels and must still be accorded phonemic status, as they would still contrast with and in penultimate positions with minimal pairs such as bilik 'room' and belek 'to inspect' and burung 'bird' and borong 'to wholesale'.
When appear next to a vowel of a different colouring, an approximant or can be epenthesized in between those two vowels, so that words like cium 'kiss' and bau 'odour' would be pronounced as and. This epenthesization is sometimes represented in writing too with an inserted ⟨y⟩ or ⟨w⟩ so that the two aforementioned words would be spelt as ciyum and bawu instead.
The vowels of,, and are commonly written without diacritics as ⟨e⟩. The vowel is allophone of, while is not. The diacritics are only used to indicate the correct pronunciation, for example, in dictionaries. In Indonesian, the vowels are marked with diacritics as ⟨é⟩, ⟨è⟩ and ⟨ê⟩ from 2015 to 2022 and as, ⟨e⟩ and ⟨ê⟩ since 2022. A different system represents,, and as ⟨e⟩, ⟨é⟩, and ⟨ě⟩ respectively. In Malay, and are represented by ⟨é⟩ and ⟨e⟩, otherwise respectively known as e taling and e pepet. Indonesian also uses the vowel in some loanwords from Sundanese and Acehnese, e. g. eurih, seudati, sadeu.
Word-final and are rare in Malay, except for loanwords, like teko 'teapot', toko 'small shop', semberono/sembrono 'careless', gede, konde, kare, mestizo, kredo 'creed', risiko 'risk', and non-Malay Indonesian names, like Manado and Suharto.
* In schwa-varieties, word-final and frequently occur as realizations of word-final and where the is silent so words such as alir 'to flow' and leher 'neck' and bubur 'porridge' and kotor 'dirty' are pronounced as and and and with word-final and.
is an occasional allophone of after emphatic consonants, and including,, and from Arabic words. Example: qari.
Some words borrowed from European languages have several notes:
* Some words borrowed from European languages have the vowels and, such as pek 'pack' and kos 'cost'. Words borrowed earlier have a more nativized pronunciation, such as pesta 'fest', which is pronounced. Some systems represent as ⟨ó⟩.
* Some words borrowed from European languages reflect the language origin, generally Dutch and English, specifically as vowels of,, and are commonly written without diacritics as ⟨e⟩. For example, the word presiden 'president' is pronounced as /prɛˈsidɛn/ in Indonesian and /prɛˈsidən/ in Standard Malay which reflect on /prezi'dɛnt/ in Dutch and /ˈpɹɛzɪdənt/ in English.

	Example	Johor-Riau Pronunciation	Northern Peninsular Pronunciation	Baku & Indonesian Pronunciation
⟨a⟩ in final open syllable	⟨kereta⟩	/ə/	/a/	/a/
⟨i⟩ in final closed syllable with final ⟨n⟩ and ⟨ng⟩	⟨salin⟩	/e/	/i/	/i/
⟨i⟩ in final closed syllable with other final consonants	⟨itik⟩	/e/	/e/	/i/
⟨u⟩ in final closed syllable with final ⟨n⟩ and ⟨ng⟩	⟨agung⟩	/o/	/u/	/u/
⟨u⟩ in final closed syllable with other final consonants	⟨lumpur⟩	/o/	/o/	/u/

Diphthongs

Some analyses claim that Malay has three native diphthong phonemes only in open syllables; they are:

: kedai 'shop', pandai 'clever'
: kerbau 'buffalo'
: 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 Dutch or English with, such as Mei 'May' from Dutch and survei 'survey' from English, are pronounced with as this feature also happens to English which becomes. However, Indonesian introduced forth diphthong of since 2015, such as in ⟨Méi⟩ 'May' /mei̯/.
Diphthongs are differentiated from two vowels in two syllables, such as:

: e.g. rai 'celebrate', kain 'cloth' ~
: bau 'smell', laut 'sea' ~

Two vowels that could form a diphthong are actually pronounced separately:

when the two vowels belong to a closed syllable, i.e. a syllable that ends with a consonant. E.g. a + i in kain 'cloth' are pronounced separately ~, because the syllable ends with an "n" consonant — and thus is a closed syllable.
when the word would be only one-syllable long if pronounced with a diphthong. E.g. a + u in bau 'smell' are pronounced separately, because a diphthong would result into a single-syllable word.
when the two syllables belong to two different morphemes. E.g. a + i in gulai 'to sweeten' are pronounced separately as, because the word is made out of two morphemes: gula 'sugar' + -i, distinct from gulai .

Even if it is not differentiated in modern Latin 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.

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 'stay' and rantai 'chain', 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. 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 consonant–vowel–consonant, where the V is a monophthong and the final C may be a semivowel, or, or another consonant.

''Baku'' pronunciation in Malaysia and Singapore

In an effort to further standardize Malay across political boundaries after having done so in other aspects such as with spelling with the 1972 spelling reform, the artificial Baku standard of pronunciation which follows a 'pronounce as spelt' guide to pronunciation was introduced and started being implemented in Malaysia in the year 1988. Starting in 1993, schools were ordered to use it in lessons and examinations, and students were only allowed to answer oral tests with Baku pronunciation. This effort ceased in 2000 with a government circular ordering its replacement in schools in favour of 'common pronunciation'. The Malaysian Minister of Education later said that this move was done because Baku pronunciation was 'different from the pronunciation commonly used by the people of this country', although some believe it had more political motivations as one of the biggest proponents of Baku pronunciation at the time, Anwar Ibrahim, had just been sacked from his position as Deputy Prime Minister just two years earlier in 1998.
Singapore started using the Baku standard for official purposes in 1993. Ever since then, there have been various protests from Malay Singaporeans, calling for the return of the Johor-Riau standard as the official standard for standard Malay pronunciation. One prominent critic of the use of the Baku standard was the late Berita Harian editor Guntor Sadali, who noted that 'members of the Malay community generally find that Sebutan Baku is very awkward'. Studies analysing the Standard Malay speech of Singaporean students, teachers and political leaders found that speakers generally speak with a 'hybrid accent' when speaking Standard Malay, mixing Johor-Riau and Baku pronunciation features. This pronunciation-mixing is particularly common in spontaneous speech where speakers are unable to monitor their speech as well as compared to when they are reading off a text.