Malay phonology

This article explains the phonology of the Malay language based on the pronunciation of Standard Malay, which is the official language of Brunei, Singapore, Malaysia (as Malaysian) and Indonesian (official language of Indonesia).

Consonants

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 [ʔ].

Consonant phonemes of Standard Malay

		Labial	Dental	Alveolar	Palatal	Velar	Glottal
Nasal		m		n	ɲ	ŋ
Plosive	voiceless	p		t	t͡ʃ	k	ʔ
	voiced	b		d	d͡ʒ	ɡ
Fricative	voiceless	f	θ	s	ʃ	x	h
	voiced	v	ð	z		ɣ
Approximant				l	j	w
Trill				r

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 /ɛ/ and /ɔ/.

Table of vowel phonemes of Standard Malay

	Front	Central	Back
Close	i		u
Mid	e	ə	o
Open		a

Table of vowel phonemes of Indonesian

	Front	Central	Back
Close	[i] i		[u] u
Close-Mid	[e] é	[ə] ê	[o] o
Open-Mid	[ɛ] è		[ɔ] o
Open		[a] a

External links

• Malay phonology