Article

The evolution of Malay spelling

From Munshipedia, the MBRAS digital historical encyclopedia

The evolution of Malay spelling

Rev. W. G. Shellabear, writing from colonial Singapore in 1901, undertook a historical investigation into the evolution of Malay orthography from its Arabic origins through the 17th century to contemporary practice, arguing that spelling reform should follow the natural trajectory of native development rather than impose European scientific systems. His central thesis is that the remarkable uniformity of 17th-century Malay manuscripts across the Archipelago reflects a fixed standard inherited directly from Arabic orthography, and that the gradual departures from that standard represent a deliberate and progressive movement toward legibility without vowel points.

Summary

Shellabear’s article is structured as a three-part historical argument. The first part establishes that the earliest surviving Malay manuscripts—dating from approximately 1602 to 1612—conform almost exactly to the rules of Arabic orthography, with the notable exception of a local Acheen practice of using tashdid to mark short vowels. He demonstrates that this tashdid usage was geographically confined to Acheen, the most powerful Malay state of the period, and never achieved general adoption across the Archipelago. The second part traces the gradual introduction of final wau and ya in words ending in diphthongs and short vowels, a change that had become nearly universal by the time of Munshi Abdullah’s writings in the early 19th century. Shellabear identifies a particularly puzzling feature—the placement of lengthening weak letters in the penultimate syllable of derived words regardless of actual pronunciation—and resolves it by demonstrating a close analogy with Javanese orthographic practice, where suffixes trigger consonant doubling in the Javanese script. He concludes that this feature was borrowed from Javanese (or a related script) and persisted in Malay spelling independently of phonetic reality.

The third part is prescriptive: Shellabear formulates a set of spelling rules that codify the modern Peninsular Malay practice, which he regards as the natural endpoint of three centuries of organic development. He explicitly rejects the approach of European scholars such as Robinson, Werndly, and van der Wall, who had attempted to impose elaborate phonetic or Arabic-based systems that the Malays found distasteful and impractical. His proposed rules are illustrated by a re-spelling of the first chapter of Hikayat Abdullah and a comprehensive glossary.

Key Findings

  • The earliest Malay manuscripts extant bear dates of A.H. 1011 (1602 CE) and 1604; the Cambridge collection was removed to Europe in the first decade of the 17th century, and the Bodleian copy of Hikayat Sri Rama entered the library in 1633 (pp. 75–76).
  • The use of tashdid to indicate the short vowel (pepet) is found exclusively in manuscripts that can be traced to Acheen, including the vocabulary of Pieter Willemsz. van Elbinck dated 1st June 1604, and the King of Acheen’s letter to James I claiming sovereignty over all Sumatran rajas as well as Perak and Pahang (pp. 85–89).
  • Van de Wall’s uncompleted dictionary (first volume, 1859) reintroduced tashdid in a restricted form, confining it to words where the accent falls on the short vowel, and noted that the original Malay spelling was traditionally known as “Achinese spelling” (pp. 87–88).
  • The final wau and ya had become almost universal in modern Malay by the time of the new Spelling Book, whereas in the 17th-century manuscripts they appear only in words ending in diphthongs, with the exception of one scribe (MS. G) who extended them to all words ending in i and u (pp. 79–80, 103).
  • Shellabear’s phonetic investigation, conducted by having derived words read aloud by multiple Malay speakers, confirmed that the root accent is retained in the majority of derived words (e.g., jâdikan, mâkanan), contradicting the view of van de Wall and van Wijk that the accent shifts to the penultimate (pp. 99–101).
  • The proposed spelling rules are explicitly modelled on the practice of educated Malays in the Malay Peninsula, which Dutch scholars themselves acknowledged as the home of the purest form of the language (p. 117).

Conclusion

Shellabear’s definitive historical takeaway is that Malay spelling has undergone a slow but consistent evolution from strict Arabic orthography toward a system optimized for legibility without vowel points, and that this evolution—particularly the Javanese-influenced treatment of derived words—represents a rational, native-driven reform that European scholars have consistently misunderstood or resisted. He argues that the only feasible path to uniformity is to codify the modern native ideal rather than attempt a retrograde return to the 17th-century standard.

Context

  • The primary archival collections examined are the Cambridge University Library Malay manuscripts (described by Dr. van Ronkel in Bijdragen Series 6, Part 2), the Oxford/Bodleian manuscripts (described by Shellabear in JSBRAS No. 31), the Leiden University manuscripts, and the Harleian MS.
  • The article contributes to the historiography of Malay orthography by providing the first systematic account of the Acheen tashdid tradition and the first demonstration of Javanese script influence on Malay Arabic-character spelling of derived words, drawing on Dutch-language sources (van de Wall, Cohen Stuart, van Wijk) that were otherwise inaccessible to English-speaking readers.

References