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This article explains the phonology of the Malay language based on the pronunciation of Standard Malay, which is the official language in Brunei, Indonesia (as Indonesian), Malaysia (as Malaysian), and Singapore.
The consonants of Standard Malay[1] and also Indonesian[2] 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, being the 18 symbols that are not in parentheses in the table as well as the glottal stop [ʔ].[3][4]
Orthographic Note: The sounds are represented orthographically by their symbols as above, except:
Notes
Apart from the above, there are a few consonants from Arabic that are used by a small number of speakers.
Loans from Arabic:
Important in the derivation of Malay verbs and nouns is the assimilation of the nasal consonant at the end of the derivational prefixes meng- /məŋ/ 'verbal prefix' and peng- /pəŋ/ 'nominal prefix'. The nasal segment is dropped before sonorant consonants, the nasals /m, n, ɲ, ŋ/, the liquids /l, r/ and the approximants /w, j/. It is retained before and assimilates to obstruent consonants: labial /m/ before labial /p, b/, alveolar /n/ before alveolar /t, d/, post-alveolar /ɲ/ before /tʃ, dʒ/ and /s/, and velar /ŋ/ before other sounds, velar /k, ɡ/ as well as /h/ and all vowels.[5]
In addition, following voiceless obstruents, apart from /tʃ/ (that is /p, t, s, k/), are dropped.
It is usually assumed that there are six vowels in Standard Malay[1][6] and also Indonesian.[2] These six vowels are shown in the table below. However, it is also possible to set up a system with other vowels, particularly the open-mid vowels /ɛ/ and /ɔ/.[7]
Phonological notes:
Some analyses claim that Malay has three native diphthong phonemes only in open syllables, they are:
Others assume that these "diphthongs" are actually a monophthong followed by an approximant, so 'ai' is /aj/, 'au' is /aw/, and 'oi' is /oj/. On this basis, there are no phonological diphthongs in Malay.[9]
Words borrowed from English with /eɪ/, such as Mei ('May') and esei ('essay') are pronounced with /e/. This feature also happens to English /oʊ/ which becomes /o/.
Diphthongs are differentiated from two vowels in two syllables, such as:
Even if it's 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 (ء); example: لاءوت laut (sea).
The vowel hiatuses below are two different vowels but pronounced as diphthongs.
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 (/ə/) in a word. It is generally the penultimate syllable that is stressed, unless its vowel is a schwa /ə/. 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 stress with a closed penultimate syllable, such as tinggal ('stay') and rantai ('chain'), stress falls on the penult.
However, there is some disagreement among linguists on whether stress is phonemic (unpredictable), with some analyses suggesting that there is no underlying stress in Malay.[1][10][11]
Classification of languages into different rhythmic classes can be problematic.[12] Nevertheless, acoustic measurements suggest that Malay has more syllable-based rhythm than British English,[13] even though doubts remain about whether the syllable is the appropriate unit for the study of Malay prosody.[10]
Most of the native lexicon is based on disyllabic root morphemes, with a small percentage of monosyllabic and trisyllabic roots.[14] However, with the widespread occurrence of prefixes and suffixes, many words of five or more syllables are found.[1]
Syllables are basically CVC, where the V is a monophthong and the final C may be an approximant, either /w/ or /j/. (See the discussion of diphthongs above.)
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