How does the tool decide a word is a loanword?

It matches each word against a curated dictionary of well-known Malay borrowings from English and Arabic. It does not guess from spelling, so only words on the list are flagged, keeping false positives low.

Which English loanwords does it know?

Common technical and everyday borrowings such as komputer, telefon, televisyen, bas, teksi, polis, sains and universiti. These entered Malay largely during and after British colonial influence.

Which Arabic loanwords does it know?

Religious and social vocabulary like selamat, masjid, kitab, ilmu, dunia, waktu and syukur, reflecting centuries of Islamic influence on the Malay world.

Will it work on Indonesian too?

Partly. Malay and Indonesian share a large core vocabulary and many of the same loanwords, so most matches hold, though some spellings differ between the two standards.

Is my text sent anywhere?

No. Matching happens against the built-in list entirely in your browser. Your text is never uploaded.

Malay Loanword Detector

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Modern Malay is a richly layered language. Centuries of trade and Islamic scholarship brought a deep stratum of Arabic loanwords — words like masjid (mosque), kitab (book) and ilmu (knowledge) — while the British colonial era and global technology added a large set of English loanwords such as komputer, telefon and televisyen. This tool scans your text and highlights both kinds of borrowing, labelling each with its donor language.

How it works

The detector tokenises your text and looks each word up (case-insensitively) in a curated dictionary of established Malay loanwords. Every entry is tagged with its source language:

English  → komputer, telefon, televisyen, bas, teksi,
           polis, sains, universiti, motosikal, basikal
Arabic   → selamat, masjid, kitab, ilmu, dunia, waktu,
           syukur, sabar, hakim, fikir

Because it matches against a known list rather than guessing from spelling, the results are conservative and reliable — a word is only flagged when it is a recognised borrowing.

Tips and example

Paste Saya guna komputer di masjid and the tool flags komputer as an English loan and masjid as an Arabic loan, while leaving the native Malay words saya, guna and di untouched.

The breakdown by donor language is a quick way to gauge a text’s register: heavy Arabic borrowing often signals religious or formal writing, while a cluster of English technical loans points to modern, technical or casual content. Note that the list focuses on well-established borrowings, so very new or rare loans may not be detected.