The old (Dutch) spelling of Bahasa Indonesia
Bahasa Indonesia used to be spelled more in line with Dutch pronunciation than it is currently. I believe the change was made at the time it was declared the official
language after World War II, or some time thereafter.
Some examples are:
- dj became j, as in:
- Djakarta -> Jakarta
- djangan -> jangan
oe became u, as in:
- Bandoeng -> Bandung
- soedah -> sudah
- doeloe -> dulu
- doerian -> durian
As for the two variants of the language, namely
Malay and
Indonesian, the difference goes further than just
spelling. A lot of words were borrowed from the 'occupying' language. In Malay from
English, in Indonesian from Dutch.
For example:
- knalpot (old Dutch: knalpot) for exhaust pipe (of a car)
- polisi (Dutch: politie) for police
- pabrik (Dutch: fabriek) for factory
- paspor (Dutch: paspoort) for passport
- abonemen (Dutch: abonnement) for subscription (e.g. for a magazine)
Of course, English and Dutch are also related, so the word for
police is nearly identical in both Bahasa Indonesia and Bahasa Malaysia (IIRC, in Bahasa Malaysia it is
polis).
Plurals
As for written plurals in Bahasa Indonesia, the short form for these is to append a superscript '2' to the plural form of a word. For example:
- anak2 is short for anak-anak, the plural of anak, which means child
- angan2 is short for angan-angan