How does it detect Jawi versus Rumi?

It inspects each character's Unicode code point. If most characters fall within the Arabic script blocks used for Jawi, the text is recognised as Jawi; otherwise it is treated as Rumi (Latin script).

Jawi is the Arabic-based script historically used to write Malay. It includes extra letters such as ڠ, ڤ, چ, and ݢ for Malay sounds not present in standard Arabic.

Are characters counted by code point?

Yes. Counting uses Unicode code points, so emoji and combined characters are counted correctly rather than as multiple units.

Does it count words in Jawi?

Yes. Modern Jawi is still written with spaces between words, so word counting works for both scripts.

No. All counting runs locally in your browser and nothing is sent anywhere.

Malay Character Counter

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The Malay Character Counter counts characters in Bahasa Melayu and is aware that Malay can be written in two scripts: Rumi (the everyday Latin alphabet) and Jawi (an Arabic-based script). It detects which script your text uses and adjusts the counts it shows accordingly.

How it works

Every character is examined by its Unicode code point. Jawi uses the Arabic script blocks — the main Arabic block plus the Arabic Supplement and Arabic Extended-A ranges that hold Malay-specific letters such as ڠ (nga), ڤ (pa), چ (ca), and ݢ (ga). When most characters in your text fall into these ranges, the tool labels the text Jawi and reports the Jawi character total. Otherwise it labels the text Rumi and reports the Latin letter count.

Total characters and characters-without-spaces are counted by spreading the string into code points, which keeps surrogate pairs (and any emoji) counted as one unit. Words are counted by whitespace, since modern Jawi still separates words with spaces.

Example

Selamat datang is recognised as Rumi with 14 characters. The Jawi equivalent سلامت داتڠ is recognised as Jawi, and the tool reports its Arabic-script character total instead of a Latin letter count.

Notes

Mixed-script text is classified by whichever script dominates.
The text area uses automatic direction, so Jawi displays right-to-left as expected.