Differences Between Malaysian and Indonesian - Orthography

Orthography

Before the 20th century, Malay was written in a modified form of the Arabic alphabet known as Jawi. After the 20th century, 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. In Malaya, the romanisation of Malay, devised by Richard Wilkinson was influenced by English, whereas in the Dutch East Indies, the system devised by C A Van Ophuijsen was influenced by Dutch.

As a result, in Indonesia, the vowel in the English word 'moon' was formerly represented oe, as in Dutch, although the official spelling of this sound was changed to u in 1947.

Similarly, until 1972, the initial consonant of the English 'chin' was represented in Malaysia as ch, whereas in Indonesia, it continued to follow Dutch and used tj. Hence the word for 'grandchild' used to be written as chuchu in Malaysia and tjoetjoe in 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: Malaysian ch and Indonesian tj became c: hence cucu.

Indonesia abandoned the spelling dj (for the consonant at the beginning of the word 'Jakarta') to conform to the j already in use in Malaysia, while the old Indonesian j for the semivowel at the beginning of the English 'young', was replaced with y as in Malaysia. Likewise, the velar fricative which occurs in many Arabic loanwords, which used to be written 'ch' in Indonesian, became kh in both languages.

However, oe was retained in some proper names, such as the name of the first President, Sukarno (written as Soekarno), and his successor Suharto, (written as Soeharto). The ch and dj letter combinations are still encountered in names such as Achmad and Djojo (pronounced as Akhmad and Joyo respectively), although the post-1972 spelling is now favoured.

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