Background

Language Family: Austronesian / Malayo-Polynesian / Western Malayo-Polynesian / Sundic / Malayic / Malayan / Local Malay

Standard Malay has official status in Malaysia, Brunei, and Singapore (Clynes and Deterding 2011, 259).
- Standard Malay differs slightly depending on where it’s spoken; however, the different dialects are generally understood to be mutually intelligible.
- Standard Malay shares many similarities with Indonesian.
Standard Malay exhibits diglossia, such that what is actually spoken (particularly in local communities) is much less formal than what Standard Malay represents. I have chosen to represent the more formal variety (specifically that which is spoken in Brunei), which diverges greatly from local varieties.

Phonology

Consonants

In other dialects, /t/ is regarded as dental (Clynes and Deterding 2011, 261).
Clynes and Deterding (2011) classify /ʔ/ as marginal (p. 261). I, however, have opted not to include it because it seems all occurrences stem from Arabic loanwords or through (optional) epenthetic processes across morpheme boundaries or in word-final positions (Kassin 2000).
/f/, /v/, /z/, /ʃ/, and /x/ only appear in Arabic or English loanwords (ibid.).
- In more formal registers (like the Standard variety), these loanword phonemes generally maintain the realization used in Arabic or English, but they are often adapted to better reflect the native phonology when used in local dialects (e.g. /f/ -> [p]).

	Place of Articulation
Manner of Articulation	Labial	Alveolar	Postalveolar	Palatal	Velar	Glottal
Stops	p b	t d			k ɡ
Affricates			tʃ dʒ
Fricatives		s				h
Nasals	m	n		ɲ	ŋ
Trills		r
Approximants	w	l		j
Note: Where phonemes share a cell, those on the left are voiceless and those on the right are voiced.

Vowels

I have chosen to follow the analysis done by Clynes and Deterding (2011) and not account for diphthongs as being a part of the language (pp. 262, 264). They treat adjacent vowels as sequences or as vowel-glide sequences when the second vowel is ⟨u⟩ or ⟨i⟩ (e.g. ⟨ua⟩ = /ua/, ⟨au⟩ = /aw/).

	Front	Central	Back
High	i		u
Mid	e	ə	o
Low		a

Alphabet

⟨e⟩ is used to represent both /e/ and /ə/, which compromises the language to some extent (Clynes and Deterding 2011, 264). I have opted to transcribe ⟨e⟩ to /e/ by default in the rule set.
Standard Malay is most commonly represented by the Rumi script, which has had several modifications throughout the years. The Crúbadán corpus for Standard Malay seems to include characters representative of multiple spelling reforms. One, which was introduced in 1924 by Zainal Abidin Bin Ahmad (a.k.a. Za’aba spelling), reflects the language more phonetically, especially concerning vowels and their realization in different syllable structures (Rozan and Mikami 2007, 139). The next reform of the Rumi script was introduced in 1972, which is what the alphabet below is predominantly patterned after. For at least some of the digraphs, I represent both old and new conventions; however, I am unable to account for every difference and orthographically marked phonetic representation. This undoubtedly compromises the language. Much of the corpus consists of loanwords too, so the accuracy of this transcription in practice is highly suspect.

Grapheme	Phoneme	Comment
a	/a/
b	/b/
c	/tʃ/
d	/d/
f	/f/	occurs in loanwords
e	/e/; /ə/	/e/: default in the rules
g	/ɡ/
h	/h/
i	/i/; /j/	/j/: following vowels
j	/dʒ/
k	/k/
l	/l/
m	/m/
n	/n/
o	/o/
p	/p/
q	/q/	occurs in loanwords
r	/r/
s	/s/
t	/t/
u	/u/; /w/	/w/: following vowels
v	/v/	occurs in loanwords
w	/w/
x	/ks/; /z/	/ks/: default in the rules
y	/j/
z	/z/	occurs in loanwords
Digraph
gh	/ɣ/	occurs in loanwords
kh	/x/	occurs in loanwords
ng	/ŋ/
ny	/ɲ/
sy	/ʃ/	occurs in loanwords
Za’aba Spelling Convention
ch	/tʃ/
dh	/d/
dz	/z/	occurs in loanwords
sh	/ʃ/	occurs in loanwords
th	/s/
’		realized as [ʔ]

Syllable Structure

Syllables in Standard Malay follow the order of (C)V(C) (Clynes and Deterding 2011, 264).

Lenition Rules

/r/ is generally realized as a flap intervocalically (Clynes and Deterding 2011, 262).
/ə/ is often elided in speech (Clynes and Deterding 2011, 264).

Misc. Rules

/k/ is often realized as [q] (or [ʔ]) in syllable codas (Clynes and Deterding 2011, 261).
Voiceless stops are generally unreleased in syllable codas (ibid.).
Voiced stops don’t occur natively in syllable codas (ibid.).
- In loanwords, voiced stops that occur in syllable codas are often replaced by their voiceless counterparts.
/u/ and /i/ are realized as [w] and [j], respectively, when preceding vowels (Clynes and Deterding 2011, 262).

References

Clynes, Adrian, and David Deterding. 2011. “Standard Malay (Brunei).” Journal of the International Phonetic Association 41 (2). Cambridge University Press (CUP): 259–68. doi:10.1017/s002510031100017x.

Kassin, Tajul Aripin. 2000. “The Phonological Word in Standard Malay.” PhD thesis, University of Newcastle upon Tyne.

Rozan, Mohd Zaidi Abd, and Yoshiki Mikami. 2007. “Orthographic Reforms of Standard Malay Online: Towards Better Pronunciation and Construction of a Cross-Language Environment.” Journal of Universal Language 8 (1). Sejong University Language Research Institute: 129–59. doi:10.22425/jul.2007.8.1.129.

Standard Malay

Daniela Wiepert