Differences between Malay and Indonesian

The differences between Malay (Bahasa Melayu) and Indonesian (Bahasa Indonesia) are slightly greater than those between British English and American English. They are mutually intelligible, but with differences in spelling and vocabulary.

Orthography

Before the 20th century, Malay was usually written in a modified form of Arabic known as Jawi. Since then, Malay written with Roman letters, known as Rumi, has almost completely replaced Jawi in everyday life. The romanisations originally used in Malaya (now part of Malaysia) and the Dutch East Indies (now Indonesia) reflected their positions as British and Dutch possessions respectively.

Related Topics:
20th century - Jawi - Roman letters - Malaya - Malaysia - Dutch East Indies - Indonesia - British - Dutch

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

In Indonesia, the vowel in the English word 'moon' was formerly represented in Bahasa Indonesia as oe, as in Dutch, and the official spelling of this sound was changed to u during the Japanese occupation. However, oe was retained in some proper names long after this. Similarly, until 1972, the initial consonant of the English 'chin' was represented in Bahasa Malaysia as ch, whereas in Indonesian, it continued to follow Dutch and used tj. Hence the word for 'grandchild' used to be written as chuchu in Malay and tjoetjoe in Bahasa Indonesia, until a unified spelling system was introduced in 1972 (known in Indonesia as Ejaan Yang Disempurnakan or the 'Perfected Spelling') which removed most differences between the two varieties: Malay ch and Indonesian tj became c: hence cucu. Indonesian abandoned the spelling dj (for the consonant at the beginning of the word 'Jakarta') to conform to the j already in use in Malay, while the old Indonesian j for the semivowel at the beginning of the English 'young', was replaced with y as in Malay. Likewise, the velar fricative which occurs in many Arabic loanwords, which used to be written 'ch' in Indonesian, became kh in both languages.

Related Topics:
Dutch - 1972

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Nevertheless, the old spelling is still encountered in some Indonesian names, such as the name of the first President, Sukarno (written as Soekarno), although the post-1972 spelling is now favoured. Other examples include Achmad and Djojo (pronounced as Akhmad and Joyo respectively).

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Although the representations of speech sounds are now largely identical in the Indonesian and Malay varieties, a number of minor spelling differences remain, usually for historical reasons. For instance, the word for 'money' is written as wang in Malay, but uang in Indonesian, while the word for 'cake' is written as kuih in Malay, but kue in Indonesian.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~