Indonesian Phonemes Relation to English International Phonetics Alphabet

Indonesian phonetic system has a simple pattern compared to English phonetization rule. Most of alphabet Indonesia directly stand to phonetic symbol. The addition for Indonesia phonetic symbol includes nasal (ng, ny), diphthong (ay, aw, ey, and oy), fricative (kh and sy), and so forth. To make a better phonetic system comparison between Indonesia and English, it’s important to have a relation table. Based on [1] and [2] (with some minor change from me in E vowel), the relation table between Indonesia and English is shown in following table 1.

Table 1 The Indonesian phonemes and their related English international phonetic alphabet symbols

No.	ID	EN	Eg. ID	Eg. EN
1	a	aa	kanvas	father
2	e	ah	sepak	education
3	e2	ax	tepung	learn
5	e3	ae	bebek	met
5	i	ih, iy, ix	bijak	see, happy
6	o	ow, ao	bola	got, saw
7	u	uh, uw	ukur	put
8	ay	ay	kaylan	five
9	aw	aw	kau	now
10	ey, ei	ey	Mei	say
11	oy, oi	oy	koi	boy
12	b	b	bantal	bad
13	c	ch	cinta	chain
14	d	d, dx, dh	dua	did
15	f	f, v	falak	fall, van
16	g	g	gua	got
17	h	hh	hirup	hat
18	j	jh	jangkrik	jam
19	k	k	kota	keep
20	l	l	lempar	leg
21	m	m	minum	man
22	n	n	nihil	no
23	p	p	pupus	pen
24	r	r	rombak	red
25	s	s	siku	so
26	t	t, th	timpa	tea
27	w	w	wangi	wet
28	y	y	yakin	yes
29	z	x, xh	zaman	zoo
30	kh	k + h	kholifah	-
31	ng	ng	ngengat	sing
32	ny	n + y	banyak	-
33	sy	sh	syukur	share

Move to the next hierarchy of language model, Indonesia have in basic 4 syllable patterns. These patterns are followed by 8 rare syllable occurrences. The table below shows us all the pattern of Indonesian word structure. (NOTE : V stands for Vocal and C stands for Consonant).

Table 2 Indonesian syllable pattern

No.	Structure	Example
1	V	/a/-nak (child)
2	VC	da-/un/ (leaf)
3	CV	man-/di/ (take a bath)
4	CVC	/lan/-tai (floor)
5	VCC	/eks/ (ex)
6	CVCC	kon-/teks/ (context)
7	CVCCC	/korps/ (corps)
8	CCV	/pra/-hara (chaos)
9	CCVC	kon-/trak/ (contract)
10	CCVCC	kom-/pleks/ (complex)
11	CCCV	in-/stru/-men (instrument)
12	CCCVC	/struk/-tur (structure)

Syllables with two or more consecutive consonants generally come from foreign words. Thus, most Indonesian people pronounce those words by inserting phoneme /e2/ to split the consecutive consonants. For instance, the words slogan (slogan), prangko (stamp), and strika (iron) are pronounced as /s e2 l o g a n/, /p e2 r a ng k o/, and /s e2 t r i k a/ respectively.

Foreign words with consecutive consonants in a syllable located at the end of word are frequently pronounced by inserting a vowel or eliminate one of the consonants. For instance, mars and lift are pronounced as /m a r e2 s/ and /l i f/ respectively.

Some Indonesian syllable patterns could be composed by limited phonemes. If two consecutive consonants are exist in a syllable, then the first consonant is limited to plosive consonants /p/, /b/, /t/, /d/, /k/, or /g/ and fricative consonants /f/ or /s/, and the second consonant is limited to consonant /r/, /l/, /w/, /s/, /m/, /n/, /f/, /t/, or /k/.

For syllable with three consecutive consonants, the first consonant is always /s/ or /r/, the second one is limited to /t/, /p/, or /k/, and the third one is /r/, /l/, or /s/. The Indonesian words, such as strategi (strategy), sprei (bed sheet), skripsi (bachelor thesis) and korps (corps) contain three consecutive consonants.

Correct me if I wrong
Sincerely,

Tirtadwipa Manunggal
tirtadwipa.manunggal@gmail.com

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Reference :
[1] Suyanto and Sri Hartati, “Design of Indoensian LVCSR Using Combined Phoneme and Syllable Models”, The Proceedings of The 7th ICTS, Bali, May 15th-16th, 2013 (ISSN: 9772338185001)
[2] Evan Tysmayudanto Gunawan and Dhany Arifianto, “”Natural Indonesia Speech Synthesis by using CLUSTERGEN, International Conference on Information, Communication Technology and System, 2014 (ISSN: 978-1-4799-6858-9/14)

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