2: Indonesian Pronunciation and Spelling

This post is the text complement of this video:

I. Writing System(s) of the Indonesian Language

Nowadays, Indonesian and Malay are both mainly written with the Latin alphabet. However, that's not always the case. Before the arrival of European cultures in South East Asia, Malay was commonly written with a modified Arabic script called Jawi. This script is still learned and sometimes used in Malay-predominant areas in Sumatra, Malaysia, and Brunei. The latter of which still retains the Jawi script as the co-official script for Malay.

II. Indonesian Latin Alphabet

Indonesian is written with the 26 letters of the basic Latin alphabet. There are no diacritics used in Indonesian, except accents on the letter e (é, è) used in some dictionaries to indicate the "taling" pronunciation of the letter ⟨e⟩.

A. Vowels

Indonesian have six vowels, two of which have two different realizations depending on the context of the syllable. The vowels are:

a: [a] as in apel [apəl] "apple"
i: [i] as in ikan [ikan] "fish"
u: [u] as in buku [buku] "book"
o: [o] as in foto [foto] "photo" or [ɔ] as in tolong [tɔlɔŋ] "to help"
e (pepet/schwa): [ə] as in beli [bəli] "to buy"
é/è (taling): [e] as in saté [sate] "satay" or [ɛ] as in bèbèk [bɛbɛʔ] "duck"

For all lesson notes here on this blog, I will always use unaccented ⟨e⟩ for the pepet and accented ⟨é⟩ and ⟨è⟩ for closed and open taling respectively, just like the above bullets. For practice texts, however, I will not use any accents to accustomize you with real Indonesian text.

One main rule of thumb for the e pronunciations is that all Indonesian affixes containing the letter e (ber-, me-, pe-, per-, ke-, se-, ter-, -el-, -em-, -er-) are all pronounced with pepet e sound. For other words, however, there are no rules and it's just a memorization game for there on.

B. Consonants

Indonesian and Malay were (and still are) the lingua franca of the region, and either thanks to that (or the other way around), the languages don't have "weird" consonants and syllable structure. In fact, for languages in South East Asia, the consonants in Indonesian are relatively straightforward. Some consonants are pronounced the same as in English:

b [b]
d [d]
f and v [f] — That's right, the letter v is pronounced exactly like f!
g [g]
h [h]
j [dʒ], i.e. English j as in "judge"
l [l]
m [m]
n [n]
s [s]
w [w]
y [j], i.e. English y as in "yes"
z [z]

Other consonants need particular attention when it comes to foreign (native English) speakers:

c [tʃ]: like English ch as in "cheese"
k, t, and p [k, t, p]: are pronounced without aspiration, i.e. without the puff of air that sometimes happen word-initially in English.
ng [ŋ]: like English ng as in "singing", but may also appear word-initially. Note that it is never pronounced like English "finger", for that we would write it as "ngg" because it is two different sounds of ng + g
ny [ɲ]: like Spanish ñ, similar to English "onion"
r [r]: trilled/rolled r, like in Spanish or Italian. You don't have to pronounce it right straight away, though! :D
sy [ʃ]: like English sh in... "English". Some people will pronounce it [s] in casual settings.
x: This letter only appears in loanwords and only word-initially as [s]. Loanwords from other languages with x in the middle of the word is always respelled as "ks", like "Meksiko".
kh [x]: like German ch in "Bach" or English "Loch Ness". Nowadays most Indonesians will pronounce it either as a [h] or a [k].

The rest of Indonesian pronunciation is not that complicated. There are no specific stress patterns, no tones, and no other articulatory concerns you need to know!

III. Disclaimer

However, that doesn't mean Indonesian is free from ambiguities, inconsistencies and irregularities when it comes to spelling. Other languages also have some of this weirdness, don't they?

The main thing you need to pay attention to is the occasional difference in formal and informal pronunciations due to influence of local languages or just some vowel reductions that happen as the language evolves. I will try my best to inform you in any lesson notes if there are pronunciation differences you need to know.

IV. Reading Practice

With all that out of the way, let's practice speaking Indonesian! Try to pronounce this words or sentences:

Selamat pagi! (Good morning!)
Apa kabar? Baik. (How are you? Fine.)
Satu, dua, tiga (One, two, three)
Inggris, Jepang, Amérika Serikat (England, Japan, USA)
Jawa, Sumatra, Kalimantan, Sulawesi, Papua (The five main Indonesian islands)
Nyanyi, menyapa (to sing, to greet)
Mengantuk, mengganggu (to be sleepy, to disturb)
Belajar Bahasa Indonésia (Learn Indonesian)

Now these ones are not in the video, can you pronounce it?

Matahari, bulan, bintang (Sun, moon, star)
Mèrah, putih (Red, white — the colors of Indonesian flag)
Saya, aku (I or me; formal and informal forms respectively)
Anda, kamu (you; formal and informal forms)
Dia (he, she, it — we don't have gendered pronouns!)

And that is all for today's lesson notes! If you have any questions, feel free to ask in the comments or DM me on Instagram (I'll post the questions and answers here later), you can try reading out loud Indonesian texts now!