Intonation and Tone Sandhi in Malay

Although Malay is not regarded as a tonal language, it exhibits tone pattern that are similar to Penang Hokkien. To make Penang Hokkien easy for Malays to learn it, I was looking for similarities in the two languages, and I discover that words in Malay also exhibit tonal characteristics.

Intonation in Malay

The tone pattern of words in Malay is fairly regularly, depending on whether the word has one, two or more syllables. In Penang Hokkien, I split every syllable to four tones. Taking the word mak as example, that would be mak1, mak2, mak3 and mak4. I notice that monosyllable words will also be pronounced with the fourth tone, namely mak4. This corresponds to the citation tone in Penang Hokkien. And similar to Penang Hokkien, the word is pronounced mak4 when it is the final syllable in a sentence.

Saya bercakap dengan mak4.

I notice that words with two syllables follow a 1-4 tone pattern. For example:

ba1ca4, bu1ku4, ba1tu4, ca1kap4, ma1ta4, du1rian4, etc.

Some of these words are loaned into Penang Hokkien. When they do, many undergo tone transformation from the 1-4 in Malay to 1-2 in Penang Hokkien:

ba1tu2, ma1ta2

Not all exhibit this characteristic in Penang Hokkien:

ja1ri4, du3rian2.

However, it is almost always that two-syllable words in Malay follow the 1-4 pattern.

In three-syllable words, the pattern in Malay is 3-1-4.

ba3ha1sa4, sem3bi1lan4, jang3ka1an4.

Even when a prefix is added, the same 3-1-4 pattern is observed. As such prefixes such as di and ke are almost always pronounced with tone 3.

di3 ma1na4, per3bual1an4, ke3 I1poh4.

When there are four syllables, the pattern is 3-3-1-4, and for polysyllabic words all syllables are toned 3 except the last two, which remain 1-4.

di3se3bab1kan4, mem3per3so3al1kan4, di3per3tang3gung3ja3wab1kan4.

Tone Sandhi in Malay

In Penang Hokkien, citation tones 1 and 2 sandhi to tone 3, while citation tones 3 and 4 sandhi to tone 1. I observe a similar pattern in Malay. Take the word mak as example.

Sa1ya4 ber3ca1kap4 den1gan1 mak4.

Notice the word den1gan4 sandhis to den1gan1 in the above sentence. Apparently the subject and verb do not undergo tone sandhi. The word mak4, being the last syllable of the sentence, remain in the citation tone.

I1ni4 mak1 sa1ya4.

Notice the word mak is pronounced mak1 rather than mak4. It seems to be that nouns and adjectives undergo sandhi.

O1rang1 tua1 i1tu4 ba1pa1 sa1ya4.
Sa1ya4 pang1gil4 o1rang1 tua1 i1tu4 Ba1pa4.

What makes Penang Hokkien a tonal language and Malay, which exhibits tone sandhi, not a tone language? I believe it's because words in Malay do not need to be articulated to a specific tone to carry its meaning. Unlike Penang Hokkien, where beh33 means sell and beh4 means buy, all the words in Malay follow tone patterns. They nevertheless undergo tone sandhi which we often take for granted.

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Thanks for reading this page. My name is Timothy Tye. My hobby is to research information about places, and share the information with people on this website. I started this website on 5 January 2003, and since then, have written about over 20,000 places, mostly in Malaysia and Singapore.

Please use the information on this page as guidance only. While I try my best to provide you information that is as accurate as I can get it to be, I do apologize for any errors. Also, as I might not be able to update some information on time, some of these pages may contain outdated information.