Jawi, an endangered orthography in the Malaysian linguistic

landscape

Journal: Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development

Manuscript ID JMMD-2846.R2

Manuscript Type: Paper

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Keywords: Arabic script, Jawi, Linguistic landscape, Malay

Jawi is the orthography in which Malay has been written since the Middle
Ages, when it was adapted from the Arabic script. Introduced by Muslim
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traders, it was adapted to Malay phonology using diacritics that modified

six letters. It was used until the Roman script (Rumi) brought in by
European traders and colonizers began to supplant it in the 19th century.
In spite of that, Jawi can be still spotted in the linguistic landscape of
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Malaysia, Brunei, Indonesia and Pattani (Thailand). For this article

snapshots have been taken of different shop signs using Jawi in Kuala
Abstract:
Lumpur, Malacca and Kota Bharu (Malaysia). After an introduction to the
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structure and use of Jawi and the multilingual and ‘multiscriptal’

linguistic landscape in Malaysia, the significance of Jawi in the Malay
Archipelago and its mainly symbolic use in the linguistic landscape are
discussed. To complement the analysis, a survey carried out among a
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sample of young Malaysians on their attitudes towards the use of Jawi is

also discussed. The article closes with some considerations and
suggestions for the possible revival of Jawi.
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Page 1 of 27

Jawi, an endangered orthography in the Malaysian linguistic landscape

Jawi is the orthography in which Malay has been written since the Middle Ages, when it was
adapted from the Arabic script. Introduced by Muslim traders, it was adapted to Malay
phonology using diacritics that modified six letters. It was used until the Roman script (Rumi)
brought in by European traders and colonizers began to supplant it in the 19th century. In spite
of that, Jawi can be still spotted in the linguistic landscape of Malaysia, Brunei, Indonesia and
Pattani (Thailand). For this article snapshots have been taken of different shop signs using
Jawi in Kuala Lumpur, Malacca and Kota Bharu (Malaysia). After an introduction to the
structure and use of Jawi and the multilingual and ‘multiscriptal’ linguistic landscape in
Malaysia, the significance of Jawi in the Malay Archipelago and its mainly symbolic use in
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the linguistic landscape are discussed. To complement the analysis, a survey carried out
among a sample of young Malaysians on their attitudes towards the use of Jawi is also
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discussed. The article closes with some considerations and suggestions for the possible revival
of Jawi.
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Key words: Arabic script, Jawi, linguistic landscape, Malay.

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Introduction

Malaysia is a federal constitutional monarchy with about 30,699,000 inhabitants (Department

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of Statistics 2015) located between Thailand in the North and Indonesia in the South. Its
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population consists mainly of Malays (54.6% of the population), other Bumiputras1 (12.8%),

Chinese (24.6%), Indians, particularly Tamil (7.3%), and other unlisted ethnic groups (0.7%)

(Saw 2015, 64). It is a multilingual and ‘multiscriptal’ country, where around 140 different

historical languages are spoken (Ethnologue) and several scripts are being used in local

publications and in the linguistic landscape. The most visible script is the Latin one, used

mostly to write both English and modern Malay, but also often used to transliterate Chinese

and Indian names. Next there is the Chinese script, used for Mandarin and other Chinese

varieties such as Cantonese and Hokkien, and the Tamil script, used exclusively for Tamil.

The fourth most common in terms of visibility is the Arabic script, used occasionally for

Arabic, especially in religious contexts, but also sometimes employed in Malaysia for Malay.

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Nowadays, even though the Latin script is most commonly used to write Malay, before the

colonial period Malay used to be written using the Arabic script, which was modified to

include phonemes not found in Arabic.

The Arabic script, or more precisely the North Arabic script, developed from the

Nabatean Aramaic script in the Arabic peninsula, with the earliest inscriptions dating back to

the fourth century C.E., a couple of centuries before the advent of Islam (Bauer 1996, 559).

As it was used to write the Quran, its prestige and significance increased rapidly and the

Arabic script, along with Islam, started spreading all over what would become the Islamic
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world, from central Africa to Eastern Europe, and from West Africa to India and as far as the

Philippines. In nearly all the countries where Islam became the main religion an adapted
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version of the Arabic script developed and started to be used beyond the domain of religion,
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e.g. in personal writing, administration, literature, etc. The Arabic script, an abjad, 2 is

nowadays used to write languages as different as Persian, Pashto, Kurdish, Balochi (Iranian
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languages), Urdu, Sindhi, Kashmiri (Indo-Aryan) and, in special contexts as we will see,
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Malay (Austronesian) (Kaye 1996, 743). Many more languages used to be written using the

Arabic script, particularly Turkish (until 1928) and other Turkic and Caucasian languages in
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some of the former Soviet Republics (and in some restricted contexts still are),3 in addition to

Swahili, Kanuri, Hausa, Fulani and many others. Arabic characters were also used by local

Muslims in a number of European languages at various points in history, including Albanian,

Serbo-Croatian, Polish, Belarusian and Mozarabic dialects in Spain (Kaye 1996, 744).

The Arabic script entered Malaysia with Islam, brought over from India around the 12th

century C.E. With the Islamization of the country, it soon replaced the Indian-derived Pallava

and Nagari scripts to write Malay. In order to do this, diacritics were added to some of the

Arabic characters to change the original sound, so that phonemes peculiar to Malay could be

written and read.

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Jawi

The Arabic abjad adapted for Malay came to be known as Jawi in the Malay world. After

being in common use for various centuries, starting from colonial times it started to be

replaced by Rumi, or the Latin script, which is nowadays the normal and official standard for

written Malay/Indonesian in Malaysia, Indonesia, Singapore and Brunei. Starting from the

19th century, therefore, the domains of use of Jawi began gradually to shrink until it virtually

disappeared, apart from a few restricted settings which are the focus of this article,

particularly the linguistic landscape where Jawi is today at the most visible, predominantly in
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the north-eastern part of the country (and in some areas in Indonesia and in Brunei where its

use for shop signs is compulsory, see AUTHOR 2016b).

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As mentioned above, Jawi is the Arabic script adapted to Malay phonology. Even though
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various standards were developed, what they have in common is the addition of six letters for
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sounds that do not exist in Arabic. These are traditional Arabic letters with added diacritics:

 ha with three lower dots (one lower dot is used for jim) for /ʧ/ (‫ ﭺ‬ca);
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 ayn with three upper dots (one upper dot is used for ghayn) for /ŋ/ (‫ ڠ‬nga);
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 fa with three upper dots for /p/ (‫ ﭪ‬pa; in other languages where this sound is part of

the phonology – such as Persian – it is usually represented with a ba with three lower

dots instead of one);

 kaf with one upper dot for /g/ (‫ ݢ‬ga);

 the waw with one upper dot for /v/ (‫ ۏ‬vi);4

 nun with three upper dots for /ɲ/ (‫ ڽ‬nya).

As the Arabic abjad only uses three vowels sparingly ‒ normally for long vowels, while the

short vowels can be indicated by three diacritics added above or below the preceding

consonant ‒ and Malay showcases six vowels (/a/, /e/, /i/, /o/, /u/, /ə/), one important problem

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with Jawi has always been the representation (or not) of vowels, and this is and has been the

main difference in the various standards or semi-standards proposed to date. The variation,

and sometime inconsistency, in the use of vowels may be simply due to, on the one hand the

pressure of Arabic (which makes minimal use of vowels, the structure of words, the context

and the reader’s knowledge making their pronunciation unproblematic) and the old Pallava

script (as well as the Latin script) on the other, where vowels are always clearly indicated

(Kratz 2010). However, provided that vowels are used whenever there may be a

misunderstanding, Jawi is as capable as Rumi of representing the Malay language graphically.

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Jawi may even be better than Rumi for one main reason: it can accommodate different

regional pronunciations. In fact, as Sebba (2007, 110) has explained:

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In general there is an inverse relationship between the amount of phonemic or phonetic

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detail and the ‘coverage’ of the orthography, defined as the range of dialects or
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varieties of the languages for which the orthography is reasonably well suited.

According to Kratz (2010, 23), what the introduction and spread of Rumi did was to take
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“away the freedom of the speakers to pronounce and speak Malay in the way which they were
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used to locally, and it broke the shared written link.” Ghim-Lian Chew (as quoted in Ghim-

Lian Chew 2013, 78) goes further focusing on the Malay identity that Jawi was able to

highlight:

Jawi enabled the many regional Malays from Boyanese to Acehnese to find an identity

equal to ‘Malay’ itself. This is due primarily to the fact that the short vowels are not

usually written in Jawi, resulting in the deduction of differences between dialectic

pronunciation of Malay in Aceh, Minangkabau or Johor and through this means,

empowering and creating a wider readership for the different regional identities.

The linguistic landscape in Malaysia

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In spite of being a very linguistically diverse country (see for example AUTHOR 2017a), in

most cases only three languages are visible in the linguistic landscape of Malaysia: Malay, the

national language, English, and Chinese, which is used on enterprises belonging to Chinese

owners. Tamil, too, can be found in the linguistic landscape, but less frequently. By law

Malay has to appear prominently even on the signs of private enterprises (even though this is

not always implemented, see for example Syed Abdul Manan et al. 2014; David and Syed

Abdul Manan 2015; Wang and Xu 2018), whereas English also enjoys high visibility ‒ in

some urbanized areas such as Kuala Lumpur it is even more prominent than Malay (Syed
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Abdul Manan et al. 2014; Wang et al. 2017) ‒ as a prestigious international language and

Malaysia’s former colonial and now second language. Chinese is the only minority language
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in Malaysia that is fairly ubiquitous, at least in the capital and the towns and cities along the
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Western coast of peninsular Malaysia and in Malaysian Borneo. Tamil, normally written

using its traditional script, is mostly visible in the various Indian neighbourhoods (’Little
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India’) that can be found in most cities along the Western coast (Syed Abdul Manan et al.
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2014; Wang et al. 2017). Malay normally appears written in Roman characters, but Jawi is

still occasionally used, and its use is actually compulsory for shop signs in the north-eastern
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states of Kelantan and in some areas in Terengganu. What is rather peculiar about Malay is

that it seems to enjoy rather low prestige among the large non-Malay minority, to the point

that this tends to make minimal use of it in the linguistic landscape of ‘private’ places that are

not regulated by law, such as the places of worship. In fact, within places of worship attended

exclusively or almost exclusively by one ethnic group (such as Chinese Taoist, Hindu or Sikh

temples) the use of the ethnic language (often in combination with English) dominates and

clearly marks the space ethnically (AUTHOR 2015). As far as Chinese is concerned, it is

normally written in Chinese characters, but names are often romanized, partly to highlight the

ethnic origin of the shop owner, which is in most cases Cantonese or Hokkien. It is the size of

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the Chinese and Tamil communities, the fact that both Chinese (Mandarin) and Tamil are

important literary languages that enjoy official status respectively in China, Taiwan and

Singapore, and in Tamil Nadu (India), Sri Lanka and Singapore, and the high literacy rates in

these languages of most Malaysian Chinese and Tamils (partly due to the presence of

national-type Chinese and Tamil schools) that have contributed to these languages enjoying

such visibility. Apart from a few exceptions, all the other minority languages, including some

that are quite widely spoken, such as Iban in Sarawak, are virtually invisible. Apart from

English other foreign languages do occasionally appear in the linguistic landscape,

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particularly in the many shopping malls that dot the country, Italian being probably the most

popular among European languages (AUTHOR 2016a).

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Jawi in the linguistic landscape

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The presence of Jawi in the linguistic landscape goes from minimal (in Kuala Lumpur, for
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example) to a major presence (in Terengganu and especially in Kelantan). Nowadays the main

use of Jawi is for ‘display’ purposes, for signs especially, and only few examples of ‘text’ use
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can be found,5 such as textbooks, stories for children and little more, prominent among these
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being the online version of the Malay periodical Utusan Malaysia, called Utusan Melayu

(http://www.utusanmelayu.com.my/), which stopped being published as a weekly paper (it

was a daily before) in January 2006 due to declining readership. It is noteworthy, however,

that the reverse side of Malaysian banknotes (ringgit) still bears two sentences written in Jawi:

‫( ﺑڠﮏ ﻣﻠﻴﺴﻴﺎ‬Bank Malaysia) on top and ‫( ﺭﻳڠݢﻴﺖ ﻣﻠﻴﺴﻴﺎ‬ringgit Malaysia) at the bottom.

Figure 1 should be placed here.

Figure 1 shows a rare example of the use of Jawi in Kuala Lumpur, for the Islamic branch of

the Hong Leong Bank. The Jawi and English versions seem to be equally prominent and are

duplicating or homophonic (the translation reflects the original text closely) (Backhaus 2007,

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91-93). Being on the left side, however, the Jawi version might be a little more prominent,

even though it is read from right to left. What characterizes the use of Jawi nowadays is its

strong connotative function as indexing Islam and Malayness. In fact, Jawi is taught at school

only to Muslim children (most of whom are Malay) in the context of ‘Islamic Education’

classes. With the introduction of Rumi, this “indirectly came to symbolize the Christian West

and secularization, while [Jawi] came to symbolize the East and religious theocracy” (Ghim-

Lian Chew 2013, 79). And, supported by the colonizers and by Christian missionaries, the

Latin script gained more and more popularity at the expense of Jawi:
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If Jawi portrays the Islamic face and Romanization the Western or secular face, there

was no questioning as to which script the colonialists preferred their subjects to use.
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Hence, from the early 15th century, there have been concerted efforts to write Malay in
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scripts other than Jawi. (Ghim-Lian Chew 2013, 79)

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However, when Malaysia gained independence from the British, it was obvious which script

the Malay authorities would designate as official in the newly independent nation: it would
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continue to be Rumi, as it indexed modernity and progress, which was what the country was
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striving for:

Many Malay intellectuals believed that Jawi, which was mainly associated with

religion rather than the wider scientific world, would not be able to tackle modernity

or any other challenges related to science and technology. (Ghim-Lian Chew 2013, 82)

In addition, it was probably also believed that the spread of Malay as the sole national

language would be made easier and faster among the large percentage of Malaysian citizens

of Chinese or Indian ethnicity if the Latin script was officialized (see AUTHOR 2017b). As a

matter of fact, whereas some important and widely spoken languages in the world still use an

adapted Arabic script (notably, Persian and Urdu), many more languages that used to be

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written in Arabic characters now use either the Latin or the Cyrillic script. A case in point

being Turkish, which switched to the Latin script in 1928 in Atatürk’s effort to modernize and

westernize the country.

When Jawi is used for official street signs in conjunction with its Rumi version the

emphasis is perhaps more on the Malay connotation rather than on the Islamic one. This can

be seen in many historical places such as Penang, Melaka or Taiping, as can be observed in

fig. 2.

Figure 2 should be placed here.

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In this sign the Jawi version, too, seems to be a little more prominent for being placed at the

top. Both writings are pronounced exactly in the same manner, and the meaning is reproduced
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in a smaller font in English (‘Tukang besi’ means ‘blacksmith’ in Malay).

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In the states and cities where the use of Jawi has been made compulsory in the
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linguistic landscape, such as Kelantan and Terengganu, the aim seems to be to make the place

look both more Malay and more Islamic at the same time. It’s no coincidence that these states
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have got a larger Malay population (more than 90% of the total population) and PAS (the
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Islamic Party) has been in power in the local governments of these provinces (and it still is in

Kelantan). In fact, it’s been a declared purpose of the local authorities to make Kota Bharu,

Kelantan’s administrative centre, an ‘Islamic city’, where the use of Jawi figures prominently

(see for example M.R. Mohd Nasir and I.H. Salleh 2014). Figures 3 and 4 show examples of

shop signs in Kota Bharu.

Figure 3 should be placed here.

Figure 4 should be placed here.

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In pictures 3 and 4 again the Jawi version seems to be more prominent for being placed on the

top, even though the font is slightly smaller than the English version. Unlike pictures 1 and 2,

in these two cases the Jawi version does not correspond entirely to the English version. In

picture 3 the Jawi version is only homophonic with the sentence below, which means ‘beauty

and health products shop’, the brand name ‘Guardian’ not having being transliterated. In

picture 4 only the Jawi version explains what the shop sells (‘kedai buku dan alat tulis’,

bookstore and stationery), while English is only used for the name of the shop. Whereas in the

previous pictures knowledge of Jawi was not necessary as all information appeared in English
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as well, in this rather rarer case of complementary or polyphonic sign (Backhaus 2007, 91,

97–98) people who cannot read Jawi will be able to infer from the name that the shop sells
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books, but not stationery. We could then say that, whereas in the first three pictures Jawi is
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mostly connotative or symbolic, in the last case Jawi is informational as well.

It is interesting to notice, however, that such a generalized use of Jawi in a way

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normalizes its use and makes its Islamic connotation weaker, as it becomes more difficult to
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associate shops like McDonald, Guardian or Digi with Islam. In short, widespread use of Jawi

is bound to make it less ‘authentic’ and more ‘anonymous’ (see Gal and Woolard 1995).
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Survey on the attitudes towards Jawi

So far Jawi has been described as strongly related to Islam and Malayness, but what are

Malaysians’ real perceptions of this script? What do Malays and non-Malays think about its

use in the linguistic landscape? In the West most people would probably associate Arabic

characters with the Arabic language and/or with Islam (and some perhaps even with

terrorism), but what about Malaysia? To answer these questions it was decided to carry out a

short survey among undergraduate students attending a degree course in languages and

linguistics at A LOCAL UNIVERSITY. Fifty students aged between 20 and 29 years old

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filled out the questionnaire shown in the appendix,6 consisting of one picture of a shop in

Kota Bharu (courtesy of Nurizzati Hafizah Anis binti Ramli and Wan Basyirah binti Wan Ali)

and 8 close-ended questions. Of these 50 students, 35 were Malay (70%) and 15 were Chinese

(30%); 7 were males (14%) and 43 were female (86%). The results, divided between those

provided by the Malay respondents (first column, with the percentage referring to the total of

Malay respondents) and those given by the Chinese respondents (second column, with the

percentage referring to the total of Chinese respondents), can be seen in table 1. The total in

the third column is followed by the percentage of all the students:

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Table 1 should be placed here.

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As can be observed, the general attitudes towards Jawi are good. The main difference between

Malay and Chinese respondents refers to the knowledge of Jawi, as all Malays know how to
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read and write it, even though the latter skill shows different levels of competence. On the
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other hand, only one Chinese student affirmed he was able to read and write Jawi a little.

These results were expected as only Muslim students learn Jawi in the Islamic education class
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at school. As far as the respondents’ perception of Jawi is concerned, both Malay and Chinese
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students seem to have a positive opinion of Jawi, although to varying degrees. What was

rather surprising was the near total absence of negative perceptions, either towards Jawi in

general or towards the shop in the picture that featured the name in Jawi as well. The only

moderately negative perception that received a high percentage of ticks by the Chinese

respondents was that Jawi was seen as useless, as most people wouldn’t read or understand it

(‘most people’ supposedly being non-Malay Malaysians and foreigners). Based on my own

experience and understanding, I have a feeling that many Westerners, not having many

personal contacts with Muslims and being more influenced by negative reports from the

media on Islamic terrorism, would have probably ticked more negative adjectives and

sentences. The biggest difference between the two groups is about the perceived difficulty and
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complicatedness of Jawi, which many Malay respondents did not find problematic, whereas

most of the Chinese respondents did. As far as the association with Islam and the

Arabic/Middle Eastern world, the majority of both groups agreed that such associations are

rather strong, particularly regarding religion. However, importantly, as many as one third of

all participants, and even more in the case of Malays, didn’t feel this association was

important, and this may be the reason the great majority of respondents were in favour or at

least did not show particularly negative attitudes towards the idea that Jawi may be used more

in the linguistic landscape, and even for publications and in education. Whereas the large
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majority of the Malay respondents responded quite positively to the last four questions, the

Chinese respondents were mostly unsure, even though quite a few agreed that Jawi should
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have more visibility and should be used more. The only question in which the majority of
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Chinese showed a strong disagreement was the idea that even non Malays should learn Jawi at

school.
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Discussion
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So, is Jawi really endangered? Considering the fact that languages are normally considered
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endangered when they lose domains of use and younger generations are less proficient than

the older ones, it could definitely be stated that Jawi is indeed endangered. Although all

Malays show a degree of proficiency in reading and/or writing it, i.e. a little over half of the

Malaysian population has some knowledge of Jawi, considering they hardly have any

opportunities to actually use it, the vitality of Jawi is low. A parallel might be seen in the way

that Latin or Sanskrit continue to be studied by many students at schools in Europe, America

and India and for which there is an abundance of original texts available, yet both are

considered dead languages.

Having said this, if languages can be revived, scripts and orthographies can, too. In

modern Malaysia, it seems unlikely that Jawi will have any chance of recovering the position
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it had in the past and replace Rumi, but it could definitely raise its vitality making Malay a

real digraphic language. On the whole, based on my short survey, general attitudes towards it

seem to be relatively positive, and there might be little opposition on the part of students to

introducing Jawi in schools for all Malaysians irrespective of their ethnic group. However, in

order to do so, in order for Jawi to spread, there is one important pre-condition – it has to

become a neutral script, and not connotative of Islam and Malayness only (‘anonymity’). As

long as Jawi is closely associated with the main religion and the bigger ethnic group in

Malaysian, it may survive in restricted spheres as an important symbol for Malays

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(‘authenticity’), but its spread will only be symbolical and will not revive the script. This is

obviously not an easy task, mainly because the Arabic script is the one used in the Quran, and
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all Malays are by law Muslim. As a matter of fact, the recent decision by the Minister of
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Education to introduce the teaching of Jawi and Khat (Jawi calligraphy) in the fourth year of

primary schools as part of the Malay language curriculum has been met with a lot of
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skepticism and out-an-out criticism by many non-Malay sectors of the population, as they see
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it as a subtle attempt to Islamize non Bumiputra citizens of Malaysia. The Latin script, too,

even though it developed long before Christianity, came to connote that religion for many
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centuries before its symbolic significance started to change, to connote Western artistic and

scientific development during Renaissance and the Enlightenment first, and then Western

colonialism. Nowadays, however, it has become a sort of neutral script which, being the script

used for English among many other languages, also indexes modernity and cultural and

economic opportunities. Cyrillic, too, abandoned its connotative function as the language of

the Christian Orthodox Church to become the ‘script of Communism’ during the 20th century,

and now of Russian hegemony (see for example Coulmas 2013, 114-116). The connection

with religion seems to be still strong for the Arabic script, even though in some languages that

make use of a version of this script, such as Persian or Urdu, the local orthographies based on

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the Arabic script have at least partially lost this connotation and have become relatively

‘neutral’ orthographies that are used for all genres, even the most ‘secular’ ones such as

politics, humour and sport. For example, in the Republic of Tatarstan, part of the Russian

Federation, beside indexing the link to the broader Islamic world, the old Arabic script also

and perhaps more importantly indexes “a pre-Soviet era of Tatar prestige, pre-eminence, and

respected cultural production” (Werteheim 2012, 97). In fact, in some cases,

the ’politicization’ of the Arabic script for religious purposes seems to be quite a modern

phenomenon, no older than one or two centuries, a consequence of the birth of nationalism.
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For example, as far as India is concerned, Rizwan Ahmad (2012, 126) observes that: “Neither

the Urdu language nor the script was indexical of Muslim identity prior to the 19th century
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language ideological debate.”

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Conclusion
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Jawi may continue to index Islam in Malaysia, Indonesia, Brunei, Thailand (in the Muslim
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Pattani region in the South) and Singapore, but that will not help this orthography regain its
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vitality. Legislators may decide to strengthen its use in schools and in the linguistic landscape,

as it is happening now in the city of Kuantan in the Pahang region, for example, and there is

no harm in this, as Jawi in the school curriculum and in the linguistic landscape enhances

diversity and highlights an important part of Malaysian culture. However, if only a small

proportion of Malaysians can read it and identify with it, the orthography is not going to

thrive. As I have argued in one previous article (AUTHOR 2017b), languages and

orthographies can spread among the population and become a symbol of identity only when

they manage to become ‘neutral’, when everybody can identify with them, when interesting

reading material and general entertainment products are available and relevant to everybody.

For Jawi to enhance its vitality, therefore, proper language (orthographic) planning should be

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carried out, including (i) its teaching to non-Malays making sure to highlight its secular usage, and

(ii) the production of interesting and relevant reading material for everybody and its extended

use in parts of Malaysia where it is now invisible. At that point Jawi in the linguistic

landscape may really start to appeal to everybody and might even become a didactic tool to

practice the script. Fo

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ev
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Appendix
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QUESTIONNAIRE ON JAWI
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Age:
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Gender: male female

Ethnic group: Malay Chinese Indian Other (please specify: )

Division:

Figure 5 (no caption) should be placed here.

Look at this picture and answer the following questions.

1) Can you read Jawi? Yes A little No

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 Page 18 of 27

2) Can you write in Jawi? Yes A little No

3) In your opinion Jawi is (you can tick more than one):

Attractive interesting ridiculous special complicated difficult ugly

easy strongly related to Islam old-fashioned beautiful strongly related to the

Middle East and/or Arabic countries cool strange modern unattractive

intimidating
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4) The use of Jawi in the picture is:

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Appropriate odd good as it enhances diversity useless, most people won’t read
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or understand it negative, it gives a negative image to the shop/product

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5) Do you think Jawi should be more visible?

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Yes no I am not sure

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6) Should Jawi be used on shop signs more?

Yes no I am not sure

6) Should there be some publications in Jawi?

Yes no I am not sure

7) Should all Malaysians, including non Malays, be studying Jawi at school?

Yes no I am not sure

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Page 19 of 27

1 The term ‘bumiputra’ refers to the ethnic groups considered to be the original inhabitants of Malaysia.
These include the various Dayak tribal groups of Borneo and the aboriginals of the peninsula, known
as Orang Asli, plus other smaller groups.
2 Abjad is an orthographic system where not all vowels are expressed, such as Arabic or Hebrew.
3 Uyghur, a Turkic language spoken mainly in China, is still written using adapted Arabic characters.
4 This is a very late addition, introduced by the Dewan Bahasa dan Pustaka (Institute of Language and
Literature) in the 1990s (Mohd Taib Osman 2004, 78).
5 ‘Display’ typefaces are used for “short blocks of text in larger point sizes”, contrasting with ‘text’
typefaces, which are used for “long blocks of text in smaller point sizes” (Amare and Manning 2012,
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7).
6 I would like to thank my colleagues Eugenia Conde Noguerol and Patricia Nora Riget for allowing
me to test their students during class time.
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Fig.1. Sign of the Islamic branch of Hong Leong Bank in Bangsar (Kuala Lumpur).
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Page 21 of 27

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Fig. 2. A street sign in Melaka’s Chinatown.

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Fig. 3. The sign of an outlet of the chemist’s chain Guardian in Kota Bharu (picture courtesy
of Ummi Feronika Rudi Sutomo).
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Page 23 of 27

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Fig. 4. The sign of an outlet of SMO bookstores in Kota Bharu, a Malaysian book and
stationery chain (picture courtesy of Nurizzati Hafizah Anis binti Ramli and Wan Basyirah
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binti Wan Ali).

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 Page 24 of 27

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Fig. 5 (no caption)

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Page 25 of 27

Malay Chinese Total

1) Can you read

Jawi?

Yes 32 (91.4%) 0 32 (64%)

A little 3 (8.5%) 1 (6.6%) 4 (8%)

No 0 14 (93.3%) 14 (28%)

2) Can you write in

Jawi?
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Yes 22 (62.8%) 0 22 (44%)

A little 13 (37.1%) 1 (6.6%) 14 (28%)

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No 0 14 (93.3%) 14 (28%)
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3) In your opinion

Jawi is:
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Attractive 26 (74.2%) 2 (13.3%) 28 (56%)

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Interesting 31 (88.5%) 6 (40%) 37 (74%)

Ridiculous 1 (2.8%) 0 1 (2%)

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Special 20 (57.1%) 7 (46.6%) 27 (54%)

Complicated 8 (22.8%) 9 (60%) 17 (34%)

Difficult 3 (8.5%) 11 (73.3%) 14 (28%)

Ugly 0 0 0

Easy 12 (34.2%) 1 (6.6%) 13 (26%)

Strongly related to 22 (62.8%) 11 (73.3%) 33 (66%)

Islam

Old-fashioned 3 (8.5%) 2 (13.3%) 5 (10%)

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Beautiful 25 (71.4%) 4 (26.6%) 29 (58%)

Strongly related to 18 (51.4%) 11 (73.3%) 29 (58%)

the Middle East

and/or Arabic

countries

Cool 15 (42.8%) 4 (26.6%) 19 (38%)

Strange 1 (2.8%) 2 (13.3%) 3 (6%)

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Modern 1 (2.8%) 1 (6.6%) 2 (4%)

Unattractive 0 0 0
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Intimidating 1 (2.8%) 1 (6.6%) 2 (4%)

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4) The use of Jawi in

the picture is:

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Appropriate 14 (40%) 6 (40%) 20 (40%)

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Odd 5 (14.2%) 1 (6.6%) 6 (12%)

Good as it enhances 26 (74.2%) 5 (33.3%) 31 (62%)

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diversity

Useless, most people 2 (5.7%) 6 (40%) 8 (16%)

won’t read or

understand it

negative, it gives a 0 0 0

negative image to the

shop/product

5) Do you think Jawi

should be more

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Page 27 of 27

visible?

Yes 29 (82.8%) 4 (26.6%) 33 (66%)

No 1 (2.8%) 0 1 (2%)

I’m not sure 5 (14.2%) 9 (60%) 14 (28%)

6) Should Jawi be

used on shop signs

more?

Yes 25 (71.4%) 3 (20%) 28 (56%)

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No 3 (8.5%) 3 (20%) 6 (12%)

I’m not sure 7 (20%) 9 (60%) 16 (32%)

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7) Should there be
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some publications in

Jawi?
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Yes 32 (91.4%) 7 (46.6%) 39 (78%)

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No 0 4 (26.6%) 4 (8%)

I’m not sure 3 (8.5%) 4 (26.6%) 7 (14%)

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8) Should all

Malaysians,

including non

Malays, be studying

Jawi at school?

Yes 17 (48.5%) 0 17 (34%)

No 5 (14.2%) 10 (66.6%) 15 (30%)

I’m not sure 13 (37.1%) 5 (33.3%) 18 (36%)

Table 1. Results of the survey.

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