Sounds

Phonology

The following are phonemes of modern Indonesian.

Vowels

	Front	Central	Back
Close	iː		uː
Close-mid	e	ə	o
Open-mid	(ɛ)		(ɔ)
Open	a

Indonesian also has the diphthongs /ai/, /au/, and /oi/. In closed syllables, such as air (water), however, the two vowels are not pronounced as a diphthong.

Consonants

	Labial	Apical	Postalveolar	Palatal	Velar	Glottal
Nasal	m	n		ɲ	ŋ
Plosive	p b	t d			k ɡ	ʔ
Affricate			ʧ ʤ
Fricative	(f)	s (z)	(ʃ)		(x)	h
Liquid		l r
Approximant	w			j

Note: The vowels between parentheses are allophones while the consonants in parentheses are loan phonemes and as such only occur in loanwords.

[edit] Learning pronunciation

Here are a few useful tips for the English speaking learner:

• /k/, /p/, and /t/ are unaspirated, i.e. they are not followed by a noticeable puff of air as they often are in English words.
• /t/ and /d/ are dental, rather than alveolar as in English.
• When /k/ is at the end of a syllable it becomes a glottal stop, which sounds like it is cut off sharply e.g. baik, bapak. This is similar to a number of English dialects where final /t/ is glottalized ("got", "what"). Only a few Indonesian words have this sound in the middle, e.g. bakso (meatballs), and it may be represented by an apostrophe in Arabic derived words such as Al Qur'an.
• The letter 'c' in a word is never pronounced as a 'k' or 's' e.g. kucing (meaning cat) is pronounced [ˈkuːtʃiːŋ].
• Stress is placed on the penultimate (second-to-last) syllable of each base word. But if this syllable contains a schwa then the accent moves to the last syllable.

For more, and to listen to examples, see SEASite Guide to Pronunciation of Indonesian