Malay phonology

This article explains the phonology of Malay and Indonesian based on the pronunciation of Standard Malay, which is the official language of Brunei, Singapore and Malaysia and Indonesian which is the official language of Indonesia and a working language in Timor Leste. There are two main standards for Malay pronunciation, the Johor-Riau standard, used in Brunei and Malaysia, and the standard, used in Indonesia and Singapore.

The ' standard started being implemented in Malaysia in 1988 but this ceased in 2000. The Malaysian Minister of Education had been quoted saying that the ' standard "is different from the pronunciation commonly used by the people of this country". Singapore started using the ' standard for official purposes in 1990. 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 Malay pronunciation. One prominent critic of the use of the ' standard is Berita Harian editor, Guntor Sadali, who noted that "members of the Malay community generally find that (' Pronunciation) is very awkward".

Consonants

The consonants of Standard Malay (Malaysian and Bruneian) 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 (used in Standard Malay, replaced by in Indonesian)
* is written or
* is written and transcribed into . Before 1972, this sound was written as or in Standard Malay (but not Indonesian)
* is written and transcribed into . Before 1972, this sound was written as in Standard Malay (but not Indonesian).

Notes
* , , are unaspirated, as in the Romance languages, or as in English ''spy, sty, sky.'' In syllable codas, 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'' ('tapioca skins'), though they are pronounced as a normal medial consonant when followed by a suffix.
*// is dental [] in many varieties of Malay and in Indonesian.
* The glottal stop may be represented by an apostrophe in Arabic derived words such as ''Al Qur'an''. In some words like ''terulang'' "being repeated" /ˈtərʔulaŋ/ that are derived from vowel-initial words with a prefix, the glottal stop is not reflected in writing.
* is pronounced clearly between like vowels, as in ''Pahang''. 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 ''hakim'' ('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, postalveolar approximant ¹Ì  The final is silent in Johor-Riau (''Piawai'') Pronunciation, while audible as /r/ in Northern Peninsular Pronunciation and ''Baku'' Pronunciation.
* Stops and are devoiced in final positions (''sebab'' ('cause') , ''masjid'' ('mosque') ), arising from some Malay speakers' tendencies to devoice such phonemes. It is sometimes said that this devoicing is nonstandard and as such, the said words must be pronounced as if written.
* , , , , , 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 and ; , and tend to only occur in speakers who speak the source languages the words are loaned from (e.g. Arabic and English) and are aware of the original pronunciations of the words.

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.

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 (nasals , liquids , and approximants ). It is retained before and assimilates to obstruent consonants: labial before labial , alveolar before alveolar , post-alveolar before and , velar before other sounds (velar , glottal , all vowels).

In addition, following voiceless obstruents, apart from (that is ), are dropped, except when before causative prefix where the first consonant is kept. This phoneme loss rule was mnemonically named "KPST rule" in Indonesian.

Vowels

It is usually said that there are six vowels in Standard Malay (Malaysian and Brunei) 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 .

Notes
* One source of variation in Malay is whether final in open final syllables of root morphemes (for example ''saya'' 'I') is pronounced as or as . So called '''a'' varieties', such as Indonesian or the varieties of Sarawak, Sabah, Brunei and Kedah pronounce it as , while 'schwa varieties' such as some Peninsular Malaysian varieties (e.g.Terengganu Malay and the prevalent Kuala Lumpur/Selangor accent) 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. There are also some Malay varieties where the open final /a/ is pronounced as neither such as Kelantan-Pattani Malay where it is pronounced as an open back unrounded [] instead.
* In closed final syllables of root morphemes, the front vowel and back vowel can have mid or even open realisations in Malay so and can be pronounced and , respectively. and on the other hand never have close realisations so 'shake' can be pronounced as but never and similarly, 'buy in bulk' is never . In Indonesian, closed final syllable and often only get realised as and .
* 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 (Sabah and Sarawak).
* Word-final and are rare in Malay, except for loanwords, like ''teko'' (teapot, from Hokkien ''tê-kó͘''), ''toko'' (small shop, from Hokkien ''thó͘-khò͘''), ''semberono'' (careless, from Javanese ''sembrono''), ''gede'' (Javanese of big), ''konde'' (from Javanese ''kondhe,'' bulbous hairdo or hair extension on the back of the head), ''kare'' (Indonesian term for curry, variation of ''kari'', from Tamil ''kai''), ''mestizo'' (from Spanish), ''kredo'' (creed, from Latin ''credo''), ''resiko'' (risk, from Dutch ''risico''), and non-Malay Indonesian names, like Manado and Suharto.
* 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 district dialects differentiate close-mid and open-mid (front and back) vowels. Examples are in the Kedahan dialect:
:# (''*mode'', from ''modal'') ('modal')
:# (''*borak'', synonym of ''bohong'') ('lie')
* is an occasional allophone of after emphatic consonants, and including , , and from Arabic words. Example: ''qari'' .
* Some district dialects differentiate vowel length. Example: (''*gulaa'', from ''gulai'', the Perak River dialect).
* There is also a ªin Indonesian, but is an allophone of as the second vowel in a hiatus such as ''air'' ('water') .ɪr but see below.
* The vowels of [], [], and [] are commonly written without diacritics as ⟨e⟩. The diacritics are only used to indicate the correct pronunciation, for example, in dictionaries. In Indonesian, the vowels are marked with diacrtics as [] ⟨é⟩, [] ⟨è⟩ and [] ⟨ê⟩. A different system represents [], [], and [] as ⟨e⟩, ⟨é⟩, and ⟨ě⟩ respectively. In Malay, [] and [] are represented by <é> and , otherwise respectively known as and .

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 English with , such as ''Mei'' ('May') and ''esei'' ('essay') 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') , ''air'' ('water') ~
* : ''bau'' ('smell') , ''laut'' ('sea') ~

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: لاوت ''laut'' ('sea').

The vowel hiatuses below are two different vowels but pronounced as diphthongs.

* : ('lively')
* : ('saliva')
* : ('outside')
* : ('paging')

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 (unpredictable), with some analyses suggesting that there is no underlying stress in Malay.Zuraidah Mohd Don, Knowles, G., & Yong, J. (2008). How words can be misleading: A study of syllable timing and "stress" in Malay. ''The Linguistics Journal 3''(2)
See here
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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 (CVC), where the V is a monophthong and the final C may be an approximant, either or . (See the discussion of diphthongs above.)

References

Bibliography

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{{Language phonologies

Malay language
Austronesian phonologies