Van Ophuijsen Spelling System

Prof. Charles Adriaan van Ophuijsen [nl; id], who devised the orthography, was a Dutch linguist.

He was a former inspector in a school at Bukittinggi, West Sumatra in the 1890s, before he became a professor of the Malay language at Leiden University in the Netherlands.

Together with two native assistants, Engku Nawawi and Mohammed Taib Sultan Ibrahim, he published the new orthography on Kitab Logat Malajoe: Woordenlijst voor Spelling der Maleische Taal in 1901, and published a second book, Maleische Spraakkunst, in 1910.

Kamil into Tata Bahasa Melayu in 1983 and became the primary guide for the spelling and usage of the Malay language in Indonesia.

Some noticeable characteristics of this spelling system were:[3] While the Van Ophuijsen system greatly aided Dutch speakers in pronouncing the Indonesian language, its complete reliance on Dutch orthography, which is rich in digraphs and trigraphs, often resulted in unwieldy spellings of Indonesian words.

Keboedajaän dan Masjarakat. Madjallah Boelanan berdasar Kebangsaän [= Kebudayaan dan Masyarakat. Majalah Bulanan berdasar Kebangsaan ("Culture and Society. Monthly Magazines by Nationality" in the modern spelling)] (1939) uses the Van Ophuijsen Spelling System which shows tréma signs.