Why does one hundred become seratus and not satu ratus?

In Malay the prefix se- replaces satu when counting exactly one of a unit. So 100 is seratus, 1,000 is seribu, and 1,000,000 is sejuta. You only use satu ratus-style forms in contrastive contexts, not in ordinary number spelling.

How are the teens 11 to 19 written?

Eleven is sebelas and twelve through nineteen use the unit plus -belas: dua belas, tiga belas, and so on. Ten itself is sepuluh. The tool handles all of these forms automatically.

How are tens like 20, 30 and 40 formed?

Tens are formed with puluh: dua puluh (20), tiga puluh (30), empat puluh (40). A trailing unit is simply appended with a space, so 21 is dua puluh satu and 45 is empat puluh lima.

What scale words does it support?

It supports ribu (thousand), juta (million) and bilion (billion). One thousand contracts to seribu and one million to sejuta, while one billion stays satu bilion in standard Malay. Numbers are split into three-digit groups and each scale is applied in turn.

Is my number sent anywhere?

No. The whole conversion is plain JavaScript running in your browser using Malay numeral tables. Nothing you type is uploaded or stored.

Malay Number to Words

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Numbers spelled out in Bahasa Melayu

Writing a numeral as Malay words follows a small set of regular rules, but the rules differ from English in important ways — the most visible being the se- prefix that fuses with hundreds, thousands and millions. This tool encodes those rules so 1,250 becomes seribu dua ratus lima puluh correctly and instantly.

How it works

The converter splits the number into groups of three digits — units, thousands (ribu), millions (juta) and billions (bilion) — then spells each group with Malay unit, teen, tens and hundreds tables.

The se- prefix replaces satu for exactly one of a scale: seratus (100), seribu (1,000), sejuta (1,000,000). Standard Malay keeps satu bilion for one billion.
Teens use -belas: sepuluh (10), sebelas (11), dua belas (12) up to sembilan belas (19).
Tens use puluh: dua puluh (20), with units appended directly, e.g. dua puluh satu (21).

Each non-zero group is spelled and joined with a space; zero returns kosong and negatives are prefixed with negatif.

Tips and example

For example, 2,000 becomes dua ribu, 1,000 becomes seribu, and 305 becomes tiga ratus lima (no puluh because there are no tens). A larger figure such as 1,234,567 spells out as sejuta dua ratus tiga puluh empat ribu lima ratus enam puluh tujuh. When writing amounts on a cheque, pair this with the relevant currency name (ringgit, sen) to produce a full amount-in-words line.