Schwa - Indonesian and Malay

Indonesian and Malay

In Indonesian, schwa can be stressed or not. Most of the times, the letter is read as a schwa.
There is also a phenomenon of pronouncing the a in the final syllable (usually second syllable, since most Indonesian root words consist of two syllables) as a stressed schwa. This is only done in colloquial informal speech but never in formal speech.

Examples:

• datang (=come), pronounced, and often written as dateng in informal writing.
• kental (=viscous), pronounced .
• hitam (=black), pronounced, written as item in informal language.
• dalam (=deep, in), pronounced, often written as dalem.
• malam (=night), pronounced, written as malem in informal language.

Indonesian orthography formerly used unmarked only for the schwa sound, while the full vowel /e/ was written <é>. Malay orthography, on the other hand, formerly indicated the schwa with <ĕ> (called pĕpĕt), while unmarked stood for /e/.

In the 1972 spelling reform that unified Indonesian and Malaysian spelling conventions (Ejaan yang Disempurnakan, regulated by MABBIM), it was agreed to use neither diacritic. Hence there is no orthographic distinction any longer between /ə/ and /e/; both are spelled with unmarked . This means the pronunciation of any given letter e in Indonesian and Malay is not immediately obvious to the learner, and must be learned separately. However, in a number of Indonesian dictionaries and Indonesian lesson books for foreign learner, the notation is preserved to help learners produce the right pronunciation. For example, the word for 'train' in Indonesia or 'wheeled vehicle' in Malaysia, which was formerly spelled keréta in Indonesia and kĕreta in Malaysia, is now spelled kereta in both countries.

In southern Malaysian pronunciation, which is considered the standard, the final letter -a represents schwa, while final -ah stands for /a/. The dialect of Kedah in northern Malaysia, however, pronounces final -a as /a/ also. In loanwords, a nonfinal short /a/ may become schwa in Malay. For example, Mekah (Makkah, Malay pronunciation ).