Pronunciation of the letter “e”

The Indonesian language has a straightforward spelling system where graphemes (letters) and phonemes (sounds) usually match. However, there is a notable exception: two different phonemes, /e/ (as in egg) and /ǝ/ (as in problem), are both represented by the letter “e”.

This second [e] grapheme, known as the Schwa to linguists, is represented as /ǝ/ in the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA). In English, the Schwa sound can correspond to a wide range of graphemes and combinations of letters, such as in: brother, doctor, popular, arrive, the, across, suppose, and syringe.

It’s important to pronounce the letter “e” correctly, as mispronunciation can make your Indonesian sound odd to native speakers. The good news is that even if you don’t get it exactly right, people will generally still understand you in most cases. Only a few words have meanings that change when pronounced incorrectly. For example, kerok with stress on the first syllable and a strong “é” (/ˈkeroʔ/) means ‘not to think properly’ or ‘being confused’, while kerok pronounced with a Schwa and stress on the final syllable (/kǝˈroʔ/) means ‘to scrape’. Note: The glottal stop <ʔ> can also be pronounced as an unaspirated , meaning you say the “k” without a burst of air.

Pronunciation of /e/ and /ǝ/

In Indonesian, the grapheme [e] is most commonly pronounced as /ǝ/. Only in about 20% of all occurrences, the letter [e] is pronounced /e/.

/ǝ/

Here are some examples of words where the grapheme [e] represents the phoneme /ǝ/ (the Schwa):
    pergi ‘to go’
    memberikan ‘to give’
    ke ‘to, towards’
    menjadi ‘to become’
    belum ‘not yet’
    benar ‘correct, right’
    enam ‘six’
    empat ‘four’
    bersih ‘clean’
    membersihkan ‘to clean’

/e/

Now listen to the following examples where the /e/ sound is pronounced strongly, like “ee” in the Dutch word “vreemd”, “ä” in the German word “Jäger”, “é” in the French word “beauté”, or “e” in the Italian word “stelle”. Unfortunately, for English, there is no exact match. The closest is “e” in Australian English “bed”. For speakers of all other dialects of English, it is similar to “e” in the word “egg”.

    enak ‘delicious’

    beres ‘done, under control’

    sore ‘late afternoon’

    mengherankan ‘surprising’

In the last example, mengherankan, the letter “e” occurs twice, first as /ǝ/, and then as /e/: /mǝŋherankan/.

So, how do you know whether the grapheme [e] is pronounced /e/ or  /ǝ/? The only way to find out is to look up the word in the standard Indonesian dictionary. Look for the entry belum in the Kamus Besar Bahasa Indonesia. You will see that the word is written /bêlum/. The Schwa is here marked as /ê/, and not as /ǝ/, but the sound it represents is the same.

IMPORTANT: In the word list of The Indonesian Way, and also in the wordlists of all other Indonesian-Online textbooks, we have indicated all occurrences of /e/ with an accent: énak, bérés, soré.

Important remarks:

1. The Schwa /ǝ/ does not appear in word-final position (at the end of a word).
2. Indonesian words receive word stress on the penultimate (“second to last”) syllable. Since most native Indonesian words are bisyllabic (“having two syllables”), this typically means the first syllable is stressed. For example, da-tang, ma-kan, and man-di have stress on the first syllable, while se-la-mat and ke-pa-la stress the second syllable as it is the penultimate.
3. However, if the vowel in the penultimate syllable is the Schwa /ǝ/, then the stress shifts to the final syllable: per-gi, e-nam, be-lum.
4. Word stress remains unaffected by any affixes added (such as the suffix -kan or the circumfixes ke-…-an, or meN-…-kan): mem-be-ri-kan, ke-per-gi-an, men-da-tang-kan.

Exercise