Syllables? You mean something like below? I wasn't sure if I'm doing it correctly for the Malay word (or even English for that matter) so I thought I start with something simpler and luckily the theory was correct on two accounts already.
English: (I) (found) (a) (cat). (4)
Japanese (romanize): (ne)(ko) (wo) (mi)(tu)(ke)(ta) (7)
then:-
Malay: (Sa)(ya) (te)(lah) (men)(jum)(pa)(i) (se)(e)(kor) (ku)(cing). (13)