1 min readJul 17, 2020
This is wrong.
"Mata" does mean "eye", but "hari" means "day", not dawn, and "matahari" means the Sun!
The Malay for dawn is "subuh", I just learned. (And yes, you do pronounce the “h” at the end — you sort of blow through your lips. I love that part.)
I actually speak Indonesian, not Malay, but the two languages are so close I've had significant conversations with Malay speakers without realizing what language they were speaking.
(And I used a dictionary to check my work just in case I was wrong.)