Today, Jawi is one of the two official scripts in Brunei. With the arrival of Western influence through colonization and education, Jawi was relegated to scripts for religious education, with the Malay language eventually adopting the Latin alphabet called Rumi in general usage.

The use of Jawi heralded the birth of traditional Malay literature, when it was featured prominently in the royal correspondences, religious texts and literary publications. Until the 20th century, Jawi was the standard script of the Malay language. The ensuing trade expansions and the spread of Islam to other areas of Southeast Asia from the 15th century brought the Jawi alphabet beyond the traditional Malay-speaking world. Windstedt suggest that it was developed through the influence of Perso-Arabic alphabet. Popular theory suggests that the system was developed and derived directly from the Arabic script, while scholars like R. There are two competing theories on the origin of the Jawi alphabet. The oldest evidence of Jawi writing can be found on the 14th century Terengganu Inscription Stone, recorded in Classical Malay language that contains a mixture of Malay, Sanskrit and Arabic vocabularies. Jawi was developed from the advent of Islam in Maritime Southeast Asia, supplanting the earlier Brahmic scripts used during Hindu-Buddhist era. Jawi is based on the Arabic script, consisting of all of the original 31 Arabic letters, and six additional letters constructed to fit the phonemes native to Malay, and an additional phoneme used in foreign loanwords, but not found in Classical Arabic, which are ca ( ⟨ چ‎⟩ /t͡ʃ/), nga ( ⟨ ڠ‎⟩ /ŋ/), pa ( ⟨ ڤ‎⟩ /p/), ga ( ⟨ ݢ‎⟩ /ɡ/), va ( ⟨ ۏ‎⟩ /v/), and nya ( ⟨ ڽ‎⟩ /ɲ/). Jawi ( جاوي‎ Acehnese: Jawoë Kelantan-Pattani: Yawi Malay pronunciation: ) is a writing system used for writing several languages of Southeast Asia, such as Acehnese, Banjarese, Kerinci, Maguindanaon, Malay, Mëranaw, Minangkabau, Tausūg, and Ternate. For the distinction between, / / and ⟨ ⟩, see IPA § Brackets and transcription delimiters. For an introductory guide on IPA symbols, see Help:IPA. This article contains phonetic transcriptions in the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA).

Jawi to rumi malay