but is about half way between those sounds, so that some persons write an o and others a u; for instance, one may write either ukor or ukur, rambot or rambut, jmpot or jmput. It matters little which way such words are written; their true pronunciation can only be learnt from a Malay. When two vowels come together, both must be sounded, but the first must be run into the second; thus au becomes very nearly the sound of ow in “cow,” as pisau, mau; and ai has almost the sound of the English i in “ice” as as sungai, pakai, kdai.
Consonants.
The consonants in Malay are pronounced as in English, except that the r should always be sounded much more clearly and with more of a ring than in English. The consonant ng represents a single sound in Malay, and should be pronounced like the ng in “singer,” never as in “single;” the latter sound is represented in Malay by ngg, thus: si-nga, and sing-gah. So also ungu is not un-gu, but u-ngu. Final k in Malay is not sounded, but the syllable in which it occurs must be pronounced very short indeed, and the breath drawn in so as to produce the shortening of the sound. The apostrophe at the end of a syllable indicates a similar abrupt sound. When the apostrophe is found between two vowels, it indicates that they should be pronounced separately, as, perkata'an, mula'i. Final h has also the effect of shortening the last syllable, but not more than half as much as final k.
In the transliteration of the purely Arabic letters no distinction has been made between ت and س ;ط and ح ;ص and ه; or ق and ﻚ. The other Arabic letters have been transliterated as follows:― ث th, خ kh, ذ dh, ز z, ش sh, ض dl, ظ tl, غ gh, ف f. The nasal letter ع which changes its sound according to the vowel written with it, is represented by a rough breathing (‘) placed before the vowel. The hyphen is used to separate from the words to which they are attached those prefixes, suffixes, and other particles which do not form an integral part of the word itself. These are: the preposition k-, the abbreviated numeral s-, the passive prefix di-, the pronominal suffixes, -ku, -mu, and -yu, and the particles, -lah, -kah, nah, -tah. The preposition di is distinguished from the passive prefix di- by the absence of the hyphen.
