English Spelling Mistakes Indonesian and Malay Speakers Make

If Indonesian or Malay is your first language, you probably write English with more confidence than you speak it. You read the same alphabet, and your own spelling is one of the most regular in the world. Yet a few English words keep coming out wrong: "sukses" turns into "sucess", "komunikasi" into "comunication", "sistem" sneaks in for system, and the s on "two report" quietly disappears.

These are not random slips, and they do not mean your English is poor. Almost all of them come from two sources: the sound system of Indonesian and Malay, and the way both languages respell the international words they borrow from English and Dutch. Because you already know thousands of those borrowed words, your knowledge sometimes works against you. This article explains the main traps, shows the errors each one causes, gives you forty words to practice, and sets out a short daily method that targets the cause. Indonesian and Malaysian Malay differ in some vocabulary and spelling, and the article notes where that matters, but the spelling problems in English are largely shared.

A spelling system that keeps its promises

Indonesian and Malay are written in the Latin alphabet with a highly regular spelling. In 1972 Indonesia and Malaysia introduced a joint reform, known in Indonesia as Ejaan Yang Disempurnakan and in Malaysia as the new Rumi spelling, which brought the two systems close together. Since then, for most words, you can spell what you hear and read what you see.

That is a real advantage. You already know the letters, you read fast, and you are used to listening closely to how a word is built. It also creates the expectation that causes most of your English errors: that each sound has one spelling and each letter one sound. English breaks that promise constantly. The fix is not to give up listening. Sound still predicts a great deal of English. The fix is to add a second question to every uncertain word: what do I know about this word, apart from how it sounds?

Borrowed words, respelled

Here is the trap that is most specific to you. Indonesian and Malay have borrowed thousands of international words, and they respelled them to fit their own rules. You know these words well, which makes their English spellings feel strangely wrong.

The changes follow clear patterns. English c with a k sound becomes k: komputer, komunikasi, kamera. English ph becomes f, or in Indonesian sometimes p: foto, fisika, and telepon in Indonesian against telefon in Malaysia. English y inside a word becomes i: sistem, psikologi, fisik. English x becomes ks: teks, taksi in Indonesian and teksi in Malay, kompleks. English qu becomes ku or kw: kualitas in Indonesian, kualiti in Malay. And English double consonants become single: komisi, aplikasi, profesional, akomodasi, sukses.

Put those together, and you can predict the English errors almost word for word: "comunication", "aplication", "profesional", "acomodation", "sistem", "foto" in an English sentence, "teks" for text, "kuality". These are not careless mistakes. They are your Indonesian or Malay spelling knowledge doing its job in the wrong language.

This is also the easiest group to fix, because the patterns run in reverse. When an English word looks like an Indonesian or Malay word you know, ask five questions. Is the k a c in English? Is the f a ph? Is the i a y? Is the ks an x? Is the single consonant really a double one? Those five checks cover most of the words in this group.

Double letters you never needed

Indonesian and Malay spelling has almost no double consonants in native words, and the respellings remove the ones English has. Meanwhile English doubles letters that it does not pronounce double: the two m's in comment sound exactly like the one m in comet. So neither your ear nor your spelling habits will remind you.

The result is the most common family of errors in professional writing from Indonesia and Malaysia, and from many other places too: "comittee", "acommodate", "adress", "sucess", "ocassion", "reccomend", "tomorow". Notice that some of these double the wrong letter. That happens when you know a word has a double somewhere but not where.

Two things help. The first is the rule for endings: a short, stressed vowel followed by one consonant doubles it before -ing or -ed, so stop becomes stopped and begin becomes beginning. Our explanation of the doubling rule, hopping against hoping covers it fully. The second is that most doubled letters inside long words come from Latin prefixes, where ad-, com-, in- and sub- merged with the next letter: ac-commodate, com-mittee, ap-plication, suc-cess. Seeing the prefix makes the double feel less arbitrary.

The letters c, j and e behave differently

Several letters that you use every day stand for different sounds in English, and the habits of reading your own language can mislead you.

The letter c is the clearest case. In Indonesian and Malay, c always sounds like the English ch in chair: cinta, kucing. In English, c sounds like k before a, o and u (cat, cost, cut) and like s before e, i and y (city, center, cycle), and the ch sound is spelled ch. That is why the borrowed words cek (check) and cokelat (chocolate) look the way they do, and why "cek" or "chek" can turn up in English emails.

The letter e is the subtler case. In Indonesian the single letter e stands for two sounds: a clear e, as in enak, and a weak, neutral vowel, the schwa, as in empat or besar. So you already read one letter with two possible sounds and decide by knowing the word. English goes much further. Its schwa, the weak "uh" in unstressed syllables, can be spelled with any vowel letter: the a in about, the e in problem, the i in pencil, the o in lemon, the u in support. That is why "seperate", "independant" and "definately" are common in every learner's writing. The fix is to find a related word where the vowel is stressed: definite contains finite, and independence matches independent.

F, V, sh and th

Several English sounds exist in Indonesian and Malay mainly in borrowed words, and many speakers pronounce them the local way.

In Indonesian, the letter v is usually pronounced as f, so televisi sounds like "telefisi", and older or regional speakers may say f as p. In English, fan and van, fine and vine, safe and save are different words, and the spelling depends on hearing the difference. The way in is through the mouth: for both f and v your top teeth rest on your lower lip, but v buzzes and f does not. Put a finger on your throat and you will feel the buzz.

The sh sound is written sy in borrowed words, as in syarat, and many speakers say it close to s, which can blur sip and ship or sort and short. The two English th sounds, in think and this, have no native equivalent and are usually said as t and d. For spelling, th causes the most trouble at the ends of words and inside clusters: month, health, both, clothes. Fortunately th turns up in a fairly small set of very common words, so once the, this, that, there, think, three, through, with and both are secure, most of the problem is gone.

Endings you do not hear and grammar that does not need them

Indonesian and Malay mark plurals by repeating a word, buku-buku, or by context, and show time with separate words such as sudah, akan and kemarin rather than with verb endings. English packs that same information into small endings: the s in reports, the s in she works, the ed in finished. Those endings sit at the ends of words, often in clusters, which is exactly where your ear is least helpful.

Native Indonesian and Malay syllables end in at most one consonant, and final stops are often said without a release, so the p at the end of tutup is barely audible. An English cluster like the one in asked or texts is therefore easy to hear as shorter than it is. Many speakers also pronounce a final b or d with no voice, as in sebab or abad, which can blur bed and bet or cab and cap in English.

The good news is that in spelling these endings are more regular than in speech. The regular past tense is always ed, whether it sounds like t (asked), d (played) or id (needed). Plurals and he, she or it verbs take s or es, whatever they sound like. You do not need to hear the ending to write it. You need to check for it, and the check becomes automatic within a few weeks.

Forty words to practice

These forty words come from the problem areas above. Every one of them is common in study and work, and several combine two traps.

Pay most attention to the words that sit in two rows at once. Communication has a c that your Indonesian or Malay version writes as k, and a double m that it drops. Professional has a single f and a double s, the opposite of what many learners guess. Texts has an x and an ending you may not hear.

A method that works on the eye and the ear

Because your errors come from two places, borrowed spellings and unfamiliar sounds, the method works on both.

For the borrowed words, put the two versions side by side. Write komunikasi and communication next to each other and mark every difference: k to c, single m to double m, si to tion. Do the same for ten of the words you use most at work. Then cover the English version and write it from memory. This makes the difference conscious, which is the step that stops your Indonesian or Malay spelling from taking over in the middle of a sentence.

For the sound-based errors, start with listening. Hear each word spoken clearly by a native speaker, say it back slowly, and exaggerate the part you tend to lose: the buzz of the v, the th at the end of month, every consonant in asked. Then type it from memory and check it letter by letter. The reading researcher Linnea Ehri describes a spelling becoming permanent when each letter is linked to a sound and a meaning you are aware of, and saying the sound as you write it builds that link.

In both cases, mix the words rather than practicing them in blocks, and bring them back over several days. Henry Roediger and Jeffrey Karpicke showed in 2006 that recalling something from memory strengthens it far more than reading it again, and research on spacing shows that reviews spread over days and weeks make it last. A few minutes a day for three weeks will do more than an evening with the whole list. The testing effect explains why the effort of recalling is what makes the difference.

British or American spelling

Malaysia, Brunei and Singapore generally teach British spelling, so many Malay speakers learned colour, centre and organise. In Indonesia you will meet both systems, in textbooks, at work and online. Both are correct. IELTS, TOEFL and most employers accept either, as long as you do not mix them in one document.

Choose the system that fits your readers, learn its main patterns, and set your spell-checker to match. If you work with American clients, switch deliberately to American forms. Our guide to British and American spelling lists the differences that matter.

What to do next

Take one page of English you wrote recently and check it only for the patterns in this article: borrowed-word spellings, double letters, and missing endings. Count each group. One will almost certainly be larger than the others, and that is where to begin.

Then practice that group, together with the matching row of the table, for a few minutes a day: compare, listen, write from memory, and bring back the words you miss. You can do it with a notebook, or with Spelling.School, which says each word in a recorded voice, shows you exactly which letters went wrong, and brings extra words for the patterns you keep missing. For a broader view, read why English spelling is so hard for non-native speakers and our complete guide to English spelling for ESL learners.

Questions people ask

Why do Indonesian speakers write sukses instead of success?

Because sukses is the correct Indonesian and Malay spelling of the same borrowed word, and you have seen it thousands of times. Indonesian and Malay respell borrowed words to fit their own rules: c with a k sound becomes k, and double consonants become single. In English the original spelling stays, so success keeps its c's and its double s. Writing the two versions side by side and practicing the English one from memory breaks the habit.

Which English words do Indonesian and Malay speakers misspell most?

The most common errors are in words that also exist, respelled, in Indonesian or Malay: communication, application, professional, accommodation, system, quality and text. Words with double letters, such as committee, address and occasion, are frequent errors too. Endings that are hard to hear, such as the ed in asked and the s in reports, are also often left out.

Why do I forget to write s and ed at the end of English words?

Indonesian and Malay show plurals by repeating a word or by context, and show time with separate words such as sudah and kemarin, so there are no endings to remember. English endings also sit in consonant clusters that are hard to hear. The fix is a deliberate check as you write: regular past tense verbs always end in ed, and plurals and he, she or it verbs end in s, however they sound.

Is English spelling hard for Indonesian speakers?

It has specific difficulties, but Indonesian and Malay speakers start with real advantages: they read the Latin alphabet fluently and are used to a consistent spelling system. Their errors are concentrated in predictable places, mainly borrowed words that are spelled differently, double letters, and word endings. Because the errors follow clear patterns, focused practice on those patterns fixes a large share of them quickly.

Should Malaysians use British or American spelling?

Either is correct. Malaysian schools generally teach British spelling, and exams such as IELTS and TOEFL accept both systems. What matters is consistency: use one system throughout a document and set your spell-checker to match. If you write mostly for American readers or clients, switching to American spelling is reasonable, but do it deliberately rather than mixing the two.

How do I stop using Indonesian spellings in English?

Make the differences visible. List the borrowed words you use most at work, write the Indonesian or Malay and English versions side by side, and mark each change, such as k to c, f to ph, i to y, ks to x and single to double consonants. Then practice the English versions from memory over several days. After a few weeks, the English spelling will come first when you write in English.

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