Lesson 50 Sebutan (Pronunciation - Part 2)

The vowel e in Malay can also pose a problem to foreigners as it can take on two sounds and there is no indication (unlike in French) to tell you which of the two sounds is the right one.
The first sound is like the e in the English word "they" (or if you know French, e with the acute accent and written é). This is called the "e taling" in Malay.
The other sound of e is what is known as the "e pepet" in Malay. This e has the schwa vowel sound and is represented by the phonetic symbol ə but if you are not familiar with phonetics just remember that it is the e sound in the second syllable of the word "alter". I have already warned you in Lesson 12 that if you are not going to start a war, you have to pronounce the word for "brown" as "pay-rang" and not as "pərang", remember?
In the following pairs of words the e in the first word is pronounced as in "they" while the e in the second word as in the second syllable in "alternate".

Click to listen

A second reading (by Muhammad Nor Ismat, a native speaker)

perang
keju
esok
berak
memang
merah

brown
cheese
tomorrow
to defecate
naturally
red

perang
kecil
emak
besar
menang
Melayu

war
small
mother
big
to win
Malay

In any conversation you are likely to say "of course" when you are in total agreement with your interlocutor. The Malay word for this is memang or memang begitu. You can also say sudah tentu. But if you prefer to use the word memang make sure you pronounce it "may-mang" or you will not be understood!
On the other hand the same first syllable in the word menang (= to win) is pronounced like the first syllable in the word "murder" so mə-nang.
Sometimes you find that e has the two different pronunciations in the same word. Two such words are kereta (ker-ray-ta) meaning car and kemeja (ker-may-ja) meaning shirt. In both cases the first e has the er sound while the e in the second syllable has the ay sound. Oh I nearly missed out these two common words meja (may-ja) meaning table and mentega (men-tay-ga) meaning butter.
As there are many more words where e has the er sound I think it would help the student to just learn off by heart the few common words where e has the ay sound. I think this might help. So learn these few words off by heart: perang (pay-), keju (kay-joo), esok (ay-), berak (bay-), memang (may-), merah (may-). They are all from the first column above plus a few more that I can think of right now: beca (bay-cha) meaning a rickshaw, dewasa (day-) meaning an adult, dewan (day-) meaning a hall, bola sepak (say-) meaning soccer, kereta (the second syllable is pronounced ray- so ker-ray-ta) meaning a car, and beta (bay-) for the royal I (that is, when the Malaysian King refers to himself). You can leave out the last word beta for I doubt if you will be able to use it in the whole of your lifetime - in your next life, perhaps? Add to the list if you should come across any other word with e that is pronounced ay and give all the other words with e the -er sound. Elementary, my dear Watson? I hope so!
Anyway to help you revise constantly I am putting the above-mentioned words where e has the ay sound by using the French symbol é for it. Here is the list:
pérang, kéju, ésok, bérak, mémang, mérah, keréta, keméja, méja, béca, déwasa, déwan, sépak, mentéga,
The following words have just come to my mind (I will be adding more as I come across them later):
élak (to avoid), élok (nice, pretty), éjaan (spelling), ékor (tail), énak (delicious). Don't think though that if a word starts with e then it has got to have this sound. Words like emak and empat also start with e but don't have this sound.

The h in Malay is always aspirated as in the English word "holiday". French-speaking learners should take note of this as they are not used to aspirating the "h" in French.
Thus:

hari (= day)

The following diphthongs in Malay (ai and au) are pronounced as in "hi" and "how" in English respectively or as in the first syllables of the Spanish words "baile" and "causa" :

Diphthong ai

ramai (= many - used for people only*)

pantai (= beach)

*Compare ramai orang (= many people) with banyak kereta (= many cars).

Diphthong au

pisau (= knife)

pulau (= island)

One more point. Although "ai" is normally a diphthong (as in ramai and pantai mentioned above) there are TWO distinct vowel sounds (a and i) in the following words:

mulai (= starting from) is pronounced mu-la-i (3 syllables)
mengenai (= about, regarding) is pronounced me-nge-na-i (4 syllables)
mempunyai (= to possess) is pronounced mem-pu-nya-i (4 syllables)
disukai (= liked by) is pronounced di-su-ka-i (4 syllables)

Also take note of the pronunciation of these two common words:

air	(= water) previously spelt as "ayer" and pronounced as a-yer (2 syllables).

kuih	(= cakes and puddings) previously spelt as "kueh" and pronounced as ku-eh (2 syllables).

The u vowel sound is similar to the Spanish u (eg. luna) or the vowel sound in the English word "full" as you have already heard in previous lessons. It is completely different from the u in french (eg tu). French-speaking learners please take note.
There are 6 vowel sounds in Malay (the e vowel counting for two). The following table from the official Malay language agency (Dewan Bahasa dan Pustaka) shows the vowel sounds at the initial, middle and final positions of a word:

ENGLISH	INDONESIAN	MALAY
cake	kue	kuih

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