The ability to speak both dialects has prompted the writer to choose this particular research topic. The writer speaks Malaysian Malay fluently, as it is her native language. However, she has only recently picked up Indonesian Malay, after having the opportunity to mingle with the Indonesian students on the Ohio University campus. She noticed that when Malaysian Malay is compared to Indonesian Malay, the common major differences are in the pronunciation of certain vowels in initial open syllables, and deletion of certain consonants at word boundary and before a consonant. In other words, the way Indonesian Malay is spoken is more likely to accurately resemble the way the words are spelled in the standard language.

This paper, which is descriptive in nature, will focus on three main phonological differences of Malaysian Malay when compared to Indonesian Malay, which are:

• the vowel reduction of /a/ to /e/ (schwa)

• the vowel reduction of /u/ to /o/

• the /r/ deletion

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