Script guide › Latin
Indonesian / Malay vs Swahili
Indonesian / Malay and Swahili sit in the same corner of the writing-system map — Grafle's Latin group — and players mix them up constantly. Here's the fastest way to tell them apart.
The tell
Both are clean, vowel-final Latin — Swahili starts words with m-/wa- (watu wote), Indonesian/Malay uses me-/ber-/di- prefixes.
Side by side
Indonesian / Malay
Semua orang dilahirkan merdeka dan mempunyai martabat yang sama.
Halo, apa kabar? Senang bertemu dengan kamu.
Sedikit demi sedikit, lama-lama menjadi bukit.
Indonesian / Malay's own tells
- Clean Latin with no accents at all; prefixes me-, ber-, di- everywhere, plus hyphenated doubled words (lama-lama).
- The endings -nya and -kan are also everywhere. On street signs, Jl. (Jalan = street) is the giveaway.
On signs in:
- Indonesia
- Malaysia
- Brunei
- Singapore
Swahili
Watu wote wamezaliwa huru na sawa katika utu na haki.
Hujambo! Habari za watoto na kazi?
Haraka haraka haina baraka.
Swahili's own tells
- No accents; every word ends in a vowel, and the m-/wa- word starts (watu, wote, watoto) are everywhere.
On signs in:
- United Republic of Tanzania
- Kenya
- Uganda
- Democratic Republic of the Congo
- Rwanda