This appendix details the orthographical considerations for Indonesian according to the 2015 Pedoman Umum Ejaan Bahasa Indonesia (Indonesian Spelling General Guidelines) by the Indonesia Minister of Education and Culture and its 2022 update, the Ejaan Bahasa Indonesia yang Disempurnakan (Perfected Indonesian Spelling). The spellings rules detailed here are also used to determine the main spelling of Indonesian entries in Wiktionary.
For the purpose of this appendix, Indonesian refers to the standard form of Malay that was adopted as the national and official language of Indonesia. Wiktionary sets the start of Indonesian at 1928, the year the Youth Pledge (Sumpah Pemuda) was written and recited.
The first orthography for Indonesian was the 1901 Van Ophuijsen orthography, which was based on Dutch orthography and was used for writing Malay as spoken in the Dutch East Indies. It has these features:
However, by the time of Indonesian independence, shortcomings of the system such as the irregular spellings of loanwords and the noticeable lack of u have required the adoption of a new orthography. Called the Republican Spelling System (Ejaan Republik) or the Soewandi spelling (after the Indonesian education minister of that time), the new orthography was adopted in 1947. While digraphs and the usage of j from the 1901 spelling remained, oe was eliminated and replaced with u, but it remained in use in names of people born before the spelling reform. In addition, spelling of glottal stops was changed: it is unwritten at syllable onset and it is spelled with K at the end of syllables. Loanwords from Dutch were also massively respelled to fit the new orthography and match their Indonesian realizations.
By that time, Malay, as spoken in Malaya (present Malaysia), Singapore and Brunei, was using a different orthography, called the Za'aba Spelling, which was in turn based on English. By the time Malaya became independent as Malaysia, the need for a common orthography across the two largest Malay-speaking countries has become apparent. Issues have been around the differing use of letters and digraphs, and the spelling of loanwords. With Standard Malay having an English-based orthography and Indonesian a Dutch-based one, harmonization of spelling has been a goal during the period of détente between the two nations after the Indonesian-Malaysian confrontation.
The modern Indonesian orthography, called the Perfected Spelling System (Ejaan yang Disempurnakan or EYD), was promulgated in 1972, alongside the reformed Standard Malay spelling called the New Rumi Spelling (Ejaan Rumi Bersama or ERB). This resulted in harmonization of spelling between the two standard Malay varieties. For Indonesian, the major changes are the replacement of ch, dj, j, and nj, with modern kh, j, y, and ny already used in Malay. Pre-1972 Indonesian digraphs sj and tj were replaced with sy and c respectively, which also replaced sh and ch in Standard Malay respectively. Reduplications, previously marked with a 2 beside the word being reduplicated, were now written in full, with a hyphen. Additional letters were also added to the Indonesian alphabet to accommodate loanwords from Dutch, English and foreign languages. Spelling of most words in the two languages have become identical, but some minor differences remain for historical and political reasons, such as different predominant sources of modern loanwords (i.e. Dutch for Indonesian, and English for Standard Malay).
Indonesian uses the 26-letter basic Latin alphabet, and each letter has a name based on their Dutch names. Recognized diphthongs are ai, au, ei, eu, oi, and digraphs are kh, ng, ny and sy. The diphthong eu from Acehnese and Sundanese was added in 2022.
There are two forms of the letters E, depending on their pronunciation. An E without a diacritic is used where it is pronounced /ɛ/ or /e/, while Ê is used where pronounced as a schwa. In the 2015-2022 orthography, Ê, È, and É are used for the schwa, /ɛ/ and /e/ respectively. Wiktionary continues to use the 2015-2022 treatment of E for its clarity.
The following are capitalized in Indonesian.
Affixes on a word are written together with the root, without hyphens or spaces. Examples:
However, if the affix comes before a capitalized word, it should be separated by a hyphen.
Words in reduplications (such as pluralized nouns) are separated with a hyphen. Examples:
If the pluralized word is a compound, only the first element is reduplicated.
Components of compound words are written separately, with a space.
If there is a risk of misunderstanding, a compound may be written with a hyphen (although in practice rare).
If an prefix or suffix is added to a compound, the space should be retained, but if a circumfix is added, the compound should be written without a space.
Some older established compounds are written without a space.
Rules on syllabification are as follows:
The abbreviation of a personal name, title, salutation, position or rank are followed with a period for each element.
Initialisms of government organizations, educational institutions, bodies, organizations and official document names are written without periods
Initialisms where they do not stand for personal names or associated elements are also written without periods
Abbreviations composed of three or more letters are written with a period