↑ अआइईउऊ/p/, /t/, /k/ are unaspirated, as in the Romance languages, or as in English spy, sty, sky. In final position, they are unreleased[p̚,t̪̚,ʔ̚], with final k being a glottal stop. /b,d/ are also unreleased, and therefore devoiced, [p̚,t̚]. There is no liaison: they remain unreleased even when followed by a vowel, as in kulit ubi "potato skins", though they are pronounced as a normal medial consonant when followed by a suffix.
↑ अआ/t/ is dental, as in French, whereas /d/ is alveolar as in English.
↑ अआ/tʃ,dʒ/ are pronounced with the tip of the tongue further forward than in English (alveolar), and without the lip rounding of English.
↑ अआइईउThe fricatives [f,z,ʃ,x] are found in loanwords only. Some speakers pronounce orthographic ‹v› in loanwords as [v]; otherwise it is [f].
↑ अआइThe glottal stop [ʔ] is an allophone of /k/ and /ɡ/ in the coda: baik, bapak. It is also used between identical vowels in hiatus. Only a few words have this sound in the middle, e.g. bakso (meatballs). It may be represented by an apostrophe in Arabic derived words such as Al Qur'an.
↑/h/ clearly pronounced between like vowels, as in Pahang. Elsewhere it is a very light sound, and is frequently silent, as in hutan ~ utan "forest", sahut ~ saut "answer". (It is not, however, dropped when initial from Arabic loans such as hakim "judge".) In dialects which retain final /h/, it may engage in liaison, as in sudah itu[sudahitu] "after that".
↑In traditional Malay areas, the rhotic consonant/r/ is realized as a velar or uvular fricative, [ɣ] or [ʁ], and elided word-finally. Elsewhere, including in Standard Indonesian, it is an alveolar tap [ɾ] or trill [r]. Its position relative to schwa is ambiguous: kertas "paper" may be pronounced [krəˈtas] or [kərəˈtas].
↑The nasal consonants/m,n,ŋ,ɲ/nasalize following vowels, and may nasalize a subsequent vowel if the intervening consonant is /h,j,w,ʔ/.
↑ अआIn Malaysian, word-final /a/ is often reduced to [ə].
↑ अआइई/e,o/ are allophones of /i,u/ in native words, but have become established as distinct phonemes in English and Javanese loan words. The diphthongs /ai,au/, which only occur in open syllables, are often merged into /e,o/, respectively, especially in Java.
↑The Malay/Indonesian /e/ doesn't quite line up with any English vowel, though the nearest equivalents are the vowel of clay (for most English dialects) and the vowel of get. The Malay/Indonesian vowel is usually articulated at a point between the two.
↑ अआइई/e,i,o,u/ have laxallophones[ɛ,ɪ,ɔ,ʊ] in closed syllables, except that tense [i,u] occur in stressed syllables with a coda nasal, and laax [ɛ,ɔ] also occur in open syllables if the following syllable contains the same lax vowel.
↑Stress generally falls on the penultimate syllable. If that syllable contains a schwa [ə], stress shifts to the antepenult if there is one, and to the final syllable if there is not. Some suffixes are ignored for stress placement.