Fawas Othmar, Shah Ahmad
Indonesian and Malay are closely related languages that share a high degree of lexical and pragmatic similarity, enabling intercomprehension among their speakers. This linguistic proximity provides significant potential for developing more effective instructional approaches in Indonesian for Speakers of Other Languages (BIPA), particularly for Malay-speaking learners. This study aims to analyze the forms of lexical and pragmatic intercomprehension between Indonesian and Malay as represented in the Upin & Ipin animated episode Susanti Jangan Pergi and to examine their implications for BIPA instruction. Employing a qualitative approach, this study adopts Qualitative Content Analysis as proposed by Schreier to examine the dialogue transcript as the primary data source. The findings reveal that intercomprehension is manifested through identical lexical items, near-identical vocabulary, distinct lexical forms, false friends, and shared pragmatic strategies, including greetings, politeness expressions, apologies, and emotional expressions. These linguistic and pragmatic similarities enable Malay speakers to comprehend most Indonesian utterances through positive transfer and the activation of their existing linguistic repertoire. Furthermore, the study demonstrates that Upin & Ipin serves as an authentic learning resource by presenting contextualized and communicative language use that reflects the close linguistic and cultural relationship between Indonesia and Malaysia. This study contributes to the growing body of research on intercomprehension among closely related languages while providing an empirical foundation for designing more adaptive BIPA instructional materials tailored to the linguistic background of Malay-speaking learners