section_path: Phonology/Vowels
section_name: Vowels
paragraph_text: Vowels
  
  Malay originally had four vowels, but in many dialects today, including Standard Malay, it has six, with /i/ split into /i, e/ and /u/ split into /u, o/. Many words are commonly pronounced variably, with either or, and relatively few words require a mid vowel.
  
  Orthographic note: both /e/ and /ə/ are written with ⟨ e ⟩. Orthographic /e, o/ are relatively rare, so the letter ⟨ e ⟩ usually represents /ə/. There are some homographs; for example, perang is used for both /pəraŋ/ "war" and /peraŋ ~ piraŋ/ "blond". (In Indonesia, "blond" may be written perang or pirang.)
  
  Some analyses regard /ai, au, oi/ as diphthongs. However, and can only occur in open syllables, such as cukai ("tax") and pulau ("island"). Words with a phonetic diphthong in a closed syllable, such as baik ("good") and laut ("sea"), are actually two syllables. An alternative analysis therefore treats the phonetic diphthongs, and as a sequence of a monophthong plus an approximant: /aj/, /aw/ and /oj/ respectively.
  
  There is a rule of vowel harmony: the non-open vowels /i, e, u, o/ in bisyllabic words must agree in height, so hidung ("nose") is allowed but * hedung is not.
  
  Study by Uri Tadmor which was published in 2003 shows that mutation of ⟨a⟩ in final open syllable is an areal feature. Specifically, it is an areal feature of Western Austronesia. Uri Tadmor classify those types into four groups as below.