The best way to describe Bahasa Malaysia (or Bahasa Melayu) and Bahasa Indonesia is that they are like Spanish and Portuguese — extremely similar in sound, writing, and spelling, and pretty much mutually intelligible.
That said, it can’t be denied that there ARE differences between Bahasa Malaysia and Bahasa Indonesia, some of which can actually lead to pretty awkward situations if you don’t know better.
Today, let’s take a look at some of the key differences between Bahasa Malaysia vs Bahasa Indonesia.
1. Different colonial influence
Despite both originating from the same root language in the past (sometimes known as “Old Malay”), there are quite a few differences between Bahasa Malaysia and Bahasa Indonesia today, thanks largely in part to their colonial heritage.
While Indonesia is a former Dutch colony, Malaysia, where Bahasa Malaysia is most widely spoken, is a British colony. As such, both these languages contain several differences that reflect their history. For example, most loanwords in Malay are of English origin while Indonesian loanwords are closer to Dutch.
2. Pronunciation differences between Bahasa Malaysia and Bahasa Indonesia
One of the clearest differences between Bahasa Indonesia and Bahasa Malaysia lies in the pronunciation. This is mainly because Indonesian is influenced by the Dutch alphabetic pronunciation while Malay follows English pronunciation closely.
One example I can think of off the top of my head is the word for “ice” which is pronounced “ais” in Malay, and “es” in Indonesian.
The difference between Bahasa Malaysia and Bahasa Indonesia is also clear enough to distinguish by sound, mainly due to the different accents and intonations. Indonesian is often straight, fast, and rigid, while Malay, especially when spoken in Peninsular Malaysia, tends to be slightly slower and words often “flow” into each other.
What’s more, in Bahasa Indonesia, the letter R is pronounced with a hard roll (think Spanish) while in Bahasa Malaysia, it’s usually more subtle. Even vowels are pronounced differently. The best example is the word biasa (meaning normal). In Indonesian, the letter A at the end is pronounced with a sound similar to the A in the word “hard”. In Malay, it’s similar to the sound that A makes in “about”.
3. Bahasa Malaysia vs Bahasa Indonesia vocabulary
Generally speaking, Malay and Indonesian both use a similar range of vocabulary and phrases in their daily conversation. That’s why despite being two different languages (technically speaking), most native speakers of either language can usually understand the other.
However, if you mingle around both Malay and Indonesian speakers long enough, you’ll start to realize a few distinct differences in vocabulary between Bahasa Indonesia vs Bahasa Malaysia.
Same spelling but different meanings
One of the major things that caught me off guard was how in Bahasa Malaysia and Bahasa Indonesia, there can be words that are spelt and pronounced in the way way but mean something completely different.
For example, the word kereta in Malay means “car”. When I traveled to Kuala Lumpur with my classmate from Indonesia, I told her we would take the kereta to the city from the airport. Instead of heading to the taxi stand, she started walking to the train station — apparently, kereta in Indonesian means “train”!
What’s more, common words in Malay like tandas (toilet), percuma (free), and kecemasan (emergency) mean something completely different in Indonesian: accentuate, useless, and anxiety respectively.
Same meaning but different spelling
Unsurprisingly, due to the difference between Bahasa Malaysia and Bahasa Indonesia in terms of pronunciation, certain words are also spelled differently despite having the exact same meaning. Most of it is actually down to how these words are pronounced and romanized.
I distinctively remember an embarrassing situation where I, having learned a few basic phrases of Malay, tried to correct my Indonesian friend when she typed “apel” in our group chat, saying that “apple” should be spelled “epal”, not knowing that the spellings differed between the two languages!
Another example is the word “broken”. In Bahasa Malaysia, it is rosak, while in Indonesian it is rusak.
Different word choices
One of the major differences between Bahasa Malaysia and Bahasa Indonesia is word choice. In some cases, it’s simply a preference for one word over the other. For example, rumah sakit and hospital are words that exist in both languages and mean the same thing (a hospital), but Bahasa Indonesia typically uses the former while Bahasa Malaysia uses the latter.
Other times, it’s that one language has a word not found in the other, like the word pengerusi in Malay, which means chairman. In Indonesian, it is simply written as ketua (which means leader).
That said, if you’re learning Bahasa Indonesia and you’re worried you won’t be able to understand Malay, don’t fret, as both these languages are about 70 to 80% intelligible.
Borrowed words
Due to the colonial influence of both languages, borrowed or loan words in Bahasa Malaysia and Bahasa Indonesia tend to differ as well. While Bahasa Malaysia contains more borrowed words from English, Bahasa Indonesia contains more words of Dutch origin.
Take, for example, the word “television”. In Malay, it’s televisyen (pronounced the same way as in English) while in Indonesian, it’s televisi (borrowed from the Dutch word “televisie”). There’s also the word “towel” which is “tuala” in Malay but “handuk” in Indonesian.
4. A minor difference in punctuation between Bahasa Malaysia and Bahasa Indonesia
Overall, punctuation in Bahasa Malaysia and Bahasa Indonesia follow the same rules: a comma is a comma, and a full stop comes at the end of a sentence. However, one of the small differences between Bahasa Malaysia and Bahasa Indonesia that I’ve noticed is the use of decimal punctuation.
I noticed this when I was texting my friends from both Malaysia and Indonesia. We were talking about splitting a tab for a meal and while the Malaysian typed MYR13.60, my friend from Jakarta typed MYR13,60. I did some digging and found out that while Bahasa Malaysia uses decimal points (.), Bahasa Indonesia uses decimal commas (,).
5. Word morphology
Finally, another one of the minor differences between Bahasa Malaysia and Bahasa Indonesia is morphology.
While most words in both languages use similar morphemes — affixes and suffices attached to nouns or verbs to change the meaning, there are certain words in Bahasa Malaysia and Bahasa Indonesia that use different morphemes despite conveying the same meaning.
One such example I can think of is the word “honorable”. In Bahasa Malaysia, it is berhotmat, the prefix ber- with the word hormat (which means respect). In Bahasa Indonesia, it is terhormat. Notice that it uses the prefix ter- instead. Another example is the word for “written”: bertulis (Bahasa Malaysia) vs terlulis (Bahasa Indonesia).
Final thoughts
And there you have it: the five key differences between Bahasa Malaysia and Bahasa Indonesia. Again, the two languages are practically almost the same if not for subtle differences that you only notice once you start communicating with native speakers.
Interested to find out more fun facts about languages? Check out our articles on the differences between Mandarin and Cantonese, and Portuguese vs Italian too!