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Basic grammar guide

At a basic level, Indonesian grammar is relatively simple. In the formal and written language things get a little more complex, but many of the complicated constructions are mainly used in writing or in formal situations and can be dropped in everyday speech.

1 Sentence Word Order

The most basic sentence structure in Indonesian is the same as in English: subject + verb + object, for example:

Saya makan nasi. (“I eat rice.”)

Nouns and modifiers, however, are placed in the reverse of the English word order. “Big house” is rumah besar, literally “house big”. The order is also reversed in indications of possession. “My car” is mobil saya, literally “car my”.

Articles like “the” and “a/an” are not used in Indonesian in the same way as they are in English; however, the words ini (“this”) and itu (“that”) are often placed after nouns to specify which noun is being referred to:

this car = mobil ini

that car = mobil itu

2 Personal Pronouns

Personal pronouns remain fixed in Indonesian, and the same pronoun is used for “he/she/him/his/her”. There’s no gender difference between “he” and “she” (both dia). However, there are formal and informal versions of “you” and “I”, different words for plural and singular “you”, and inclusive and exclusive versions of “we”. See the table below for details.

But, in everyday conversations, many of these distinctions are not used and Indonesians are wonderfully forgiving about minor grammatical infractions (i.e., using the incorrect form).

However, it is a good idea to always start out by addressing people you meet using the more formal and common pronouns (see below). Only use the informal pronouns with people you know well.

Here is a table showing the common Indonesian pronouns:

	FORMAL	INFORMAL
I/me/my/mine	saya	aku
you/your/yours (singular)	anda	kamu
he/she/him/his/her/hers	dia
we/our/ours (not including the listener)	kami
we/our/ours (including the listener)	kita
you/your/yours (plural)	kalian
they/their/theirs	mereka

It is normal in Indonesian to drop pronouns altogether in simple sentences. Suka kopi? (literally, “Like coffee?”) can be used instead of “Do you like coffee?” And you simply reply Suka! as a statement, this time meaning “I like.” (instead of Saya suka kopi.).

3 Verbs

Indonesian verbs have a simple root form to which prefixes and suffixes are added, such as mem-, ber-, -kan, etc. For instance, the word “to take” in Indonesian is membawa (made of the root verb bawa + the active verb prefix mem-). Fortunately, in everyday speech Indonesians often use the root verb alone, so you can just say bawa instead of membawa to mean “take”.

The verb “to be” doesn’t exist in Indonesian in the same way as it does in English, so the sentence “I am sick.” is translated as Saya sakit. (literally, “I sick.”). However, the much-used word ada (“to have”) is a very useful equivalent to “there is/there are”. Ada hotel means “there is a hotel/there are hotels”.

Verbs are fixed and do not change according to tense, quantity or gender. Time is indicated by adding time words such as sudah (“already”), belum (“not yet”), pernah (“have ever”), akan (“will”), sedang (“currently”) before the verb. In practice it’s usual to leave these words out, if the timeframe is already clear from the context, so in everyday speech “will go”, “going”, “went”, and “have gone” can all be translated as pergi (“go”). See Tenses on page 11 below.

Indonesians tend to use passive verb forms much more often than in English. The passive form is usually formed by placing the object of the action at the beginning of the sentence and adding the prefix di- to the root verb. Dia bawa mobil means “he used the car”; mobil dibawa dia means “the car was used by him”, with di- + bawa creating the passive verb form.

Some useful verbs:

to own, to have punya

to need perlu

to want mau

to like suka

to know tahu

to look for cari (pronounced “chari”)

4 Plurals

It is not necessary to indicate a plural noun in Indonesian. All nouns can be either singular or plural, and quantity is implied by the context. “One person” is satu orang, and “two people” is dua orang (literally, “two person”); “many people” is banyak orang (literally, “many person”). Sometimes nouns are doubled but this is mainly done to indicate variety rather than quantity, for example, ada hotel-hotel (“there are [many kinds of] hotels”).

5 Comparisons

To form comparisons (the equivalent in English -er, -est), the words lebih (“more”), kurang (“less”) and paling (“most”) are added before an adjective. The word daripada equates to “than”.

For example:

beautiful indah	less beautiful kurang indah
more beautiful lebih indah	most beautiful paling indah

That hotel is more expensive than this hotel.

Hotel itu lebih mahal daripada hotel ini.

6 Questions

The commonest way to form a question in Indonesian is through the use of intonation, adding a rising questioning tone at the end of the sentence. The word order does not change as it does in English.

Is there a hotel there?	There is a hotel there.
Ada hotel disana?	Ada hotel disana.

If you want extra clarity you can add the question word Apakah (“Is it so?”) in front of the sentence: Apakah ada hotel disana?

Other question words:

Why? Kenapa?	Who? Siapa?
How? Bagaimana?	Which? Yang mana?
How many/How much? Berapa?	Where? Dimana/Mana?
When? Kapan?

7 Yes and No

yes ya

no tidak

not bukan

Tidak applies to verbs and adjectives; bukan applies to nouns. Negations always go before the word they are describing.

There is no hotel here.	That’s not a hotel.
Tidak ada hotel disini.	Itu bukan hotel
I can.	I cannot.
Saya bisa.	Saya tidak bisa.

The response to questions featuring a verb, whether positive or negative, is usually to repeat the verb, rather than to say “yes” or “no”. For example, to the question Ada hotel disini? (“is there a hotel here?”) the response would either be Ada. (literally, “There is.”), or Tidak ada. (literally, “There is not.”) rather than simply ya or tidak.

In everyday speech the word tidak “not” is often shortened to nggak or gak, or tak. to

8 Terms of Address

Much value is placed on politeness in Indonesia, and it always is best to stick to the formal versions of “I” and “you” (saya and anda) when addressing someone until you hear the person you’re speaking to start to use the more informal versions (aku and kamu).

Several different terms of address are used in Indonesian, but use the most standard ones. The commonest ones are bapak for men (shortened to pak; literally, “father” but equivalent to “sir” or “Mr.” in English) and ibu for women (shortened to bu; literally, “mother” but equivalent to “madam” or “Mrs.”). You can use these in place of personal pronouns, for example, Bapak mau yang ini? (“Would you like this one, sir?”) Bapak and ibu are followed by the person’s first name, for example: Pak Bill (“Mr. Bill”), or Ibu Janet (“Mrs. Janet”) which seems strange in English but is normal in Indonesian. Most Indonesians rarely use surnames and address everyone by their first name only, preceded by Pak or Ibu.

9 Tenses

The same phrase can refer to an event or action occurring in the past, the present and the future. In situations where you need to clarify when something happened, you can add specific time words. Thus, “I buy bananas” or Saya beli pisang in the future tense becomes “I will buy bananas tomorrow” or Saya akan beli pisang besok. And to say you’ve already bought bananas would be Saya sudah beli pisang.

will akan	already sudah
to have ever pernah	not yet belum
in the middle of sedang