Script guide › Latin
Indonesian / Malay vs Vietnamese
Indonesian / Malay and Vietnamese 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
Vietnamese is instantly recognizable by stacked diacritics; Indonesian/Malay has none at all.
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
Vietnamese
Tất cả mọi người sinh ra đều tự do và bình đẳng.
Xin chào, bạn có khỏe không?
Có công mài sắt, có ngày nên kim.
Vietnamese's own tells
- Stacked diacritics — tone marks on top of vowel marks (ề, ỏ, ắ) — nothing else looks like it.
- Every word is short (one syllable).
On signs in:
- Vietnam