Jawi Letters

Jawi is how Malay was written for most of its history: the Arabic alphabet, arriving with Islam, reshaped for Malay sounds. The standard list taught in Malaysia has 37 letters. It starts like Arabic, ا alif, ب ba, ت ta, adds ة ta marbutah right after ta, and slots the Malay letters in beside the Arabic letter each one is built from: چ after ج, ڠ after غ, ڤ after ف, ݢ after ک, ۏ after و. The list ends ه ha, ء hamzah, ي ya, ى ye and ڽ nya.

Jawi runs right to left and its letters join inside a word, so one letter changes shape depending on where it stands: ک alone, but کامي (kami, we) once it is joined. The grid gives each letter in its plain form; once pasted next to other letters, your phone or computer joins them correctly by itself. Each row in the grid also shows the letter's Malay name and the Rumi (Latin-alphabet Malay) letters it stands for.

The letters in Arabic loanwords keep their Arabic look but are read the Malay way: ث, س and ص all sound s, ذ, ز and ظ all sound z. So ثلاث (Selasa, Tuesday, from Arabic) and سوسو (susu, milk, a Malay word) start with different letters but the same sound.

The extra Jawi letters: چ ڠ ڤ ݢ ڽ ۏ

Malay has sounds Arabic does not, and Jawi made its own letters for them by adding dots to Arabic shapes. چ ca writes c (the ch of cinta, چينتا, love). ڠ nga is ain with three dots and writes ng, as in bunga بوڠا (flower). ڤ pa is fa with three dots and writes p, as in pagi ڤاݢي (morning). ݢ ga is kaf with one dot and writes the hard g of negara نݢارا (country). ڽ nya is nun with three dots and writes ny, as in nyanyi ڽاڽي (sing). ۏ va, the newest, writes v in borrowed words such as video ۏيديو.

Two of them have look-alikes that trip people up. Unicode names ڤ "veh" (U+06A4), because other languages use that shape for v, but in Jawi it is always p; Persian and Urdu write p with a different letter, پ, which is not Jawi. And ga has two encodings: Malaysia's standard is ݢ (U+0762, a dot above kaf), while many older files, fonts and texts from Indonesia use ڬ (U+06AC); both are in the grid so you can match the text you are copying into.

Kaf works the same way: Jawi fonts show it as ک (U+06A9), while text typed on an Arabic keyboard gives Arabic ك (U+0643). They mean the same letter and differ only in shape, most visibly at the end of a word; pick the one that matches the rest of your text, because a search for one will not find the other.

How Jawi spells Malay: vowels, hamzah and letters that don't join

Jawi writes almost no vowel marks. The letters ا, و and ي show vowels instead: و can be w, u or o, ي can be y, i or e. A final a is usually left unwritten, which is why saya is ساي, apa is اڤ, raya is راي and bahasa is بهاس. Spelling follows fixed rules, so learners memorise many common words whole.

ى ye, the dotless ya, ends Arabic names and words such as Isa عيسى and Mustafa مصطفى. ء hamzah marks the catch in the voice between vowels and can sit on the line by itself, where Arabic would put it on a seat; the forms أ إ آ ؤ ئ appear in Arabic words and in some Malay spellings.

Eight letters never join to the letter after them: ا د ذ ر ز و ۏ and ء. That is the answer to the school question about which huruf jawi tak boleh sambung; after one of them, the next letter starts fresh, as in داتڠ (datang, come), where both د and ا break the chain.

How to type Jawi letters in Word, on Windows, Mac and phones

Most computers have no Jawi keyboard switched on, so the fastest way is to tap the letter in the grid and paste it. For longer writing, add the Arabic keyboard that Windows and macOS already include: it types the 28 shared letters plus ة, ء and the hamza forms. Free Jawi layouts, such as the one from Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia (UKM), add the six Malay letters as keys.

In Microsoft Word on Windows, type a letter's code and press Alt+X: 06A0 becomes ڠ, 06A4 ڤ, 0762 ݢ, 06BD ڽ, 0686 چ, 06CF ۏ and 06A9 ک. On a Mac, switch to the Unicode Hex Input source and hold Option while typing the same four characters. In HTML, write ڠ for ڠ, ڤ for ڤ and so on.

On a phone, add a Jawi keyboard app, or add the Arabic keyboard in your keyboard settings for the shared letters and paste the six extras from this page. Pick a font that supports Jawi, especially in design apps; a font made only for Arabic may show ڠ or ݢ as empty boxes.

Where Jawi is written, and related alphabets

Jawi has official standing in Brunei, where schoolchildren learn it and public signs carry Jawi above the Latin text. In Malaysia it is taught in primary school, used in Islamic teaching, on mosques and on many shop and road signs, especially in Kelantan and Terengganu, and the ringgit banknotes carry the central bank's name in Jawi. In Indonesia the same script is called Arab Melayu, still seen on signs in Riau, and in Aceh Jawoë; in southern Thailand, Patani Malay is written in Jawi too.

CLDR, the Unicode language database, estimates about 3.4 million people write Malay in Jawi, almost all of them counted in Indonesia, with about 25,000 in Brunei and a few hundred on the Cocos (Keeling) Islands. Those estimates leave out Malaysia, where Jawi is taught in schools and still read; all Malay speakers together come to about 37 million in CLDR's count. Everyday Malay is now written in Rumi, plain A–Z, which has its own Malay collection.

For the full Arabic alphabet with its vowel marks, see the Arabic collection; Persian is another language that added its own letters to Arabic, but different ones (پ چ ژ گ). Neighbouring scripts and languages have collections of their own too: Indonesian, Acehnese, Banjar, Minangkabau and Pattani Malay, and the country pages Malaysia, Brunei, Indonesia and Thailand gather their flags, emoji and Jawi letters.