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Indonesian phrases, by meaning
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Common questions about Indonesian
What's actually on this Indonesian page?
Nineteen functional categories of meaning, with worked examples: time signals (sudah, sedang, akan, masih, baru), modality (bisa for ability, harus for must, mau for want), negation (tidak for verbs and adjectives, bukan for nouns and identity), questions (apa, siapa, di mana, kapan, mengapa, bagaimana), comparison (lebih...daripada), the voice-shifting prefixes me- and di-, and 12 more. Every example uses the Latin-script Indonesian orthography with a word-by-word gloss.
How does Indonesian work without verb tenses?
By using context and small time-marker words. Saya makan can mean 'I eat', 'I ate', or 'I am eating' depending on the surrounding clue. Add sudah and you get 'I already ate'; add sedang and you get 'I am eating'; add akan and you get 'I will eat'. The verb makan never changes — the time markers do all the lifting.
Why does the same root appear with so many prefixes?
Because Indonesian uses prefixes (and suffixes) to reshape root meaning systematically. From the root tulis 'write' you get menulis (to write, active), ditulis (to be written, passive), tertulis (written, stative), penulis (writer, agent), tulisan (writing, result). Recognizing the root strips a word down to its core meaning; recognizing the affix tells you the role.
Is this Standard Indonesian or another variety?
Standard Bahasa Indonesia (the official register used in education, broadcasting, and writing across Indonesia). Spoken Jakartan and other regional varieties drop affixes more freely and pull in particles like nih, dong, sih, kok. The structures shown here are the broadly understood standard, with everyday phrasings preferred over excessively formal ones.
What's the difference between Indonesian and Malay?
Indonesian (Bahasa Indonesia) and Malaysian Malay (Bahasa Melayu) share a common literary base and most grammar — they're often taught as one language at the syntactic level. They diverge in vocabulary (some everyday words pulled from Dutch in Indonesian, English in Malay), in some affix preferences, and in standardization choices. A speaker of one understands the other with little adjustment.
Sources for Indonesian
The grammatical descriptions on this page are informed by the following published reference and descriptive grammars. Grammatical facts themselves are not subject to copyright; the scholars who documented them deserve attribution.
- Sneddon, James Neil; Adelaar, Alexander; Djenar, Dwi Noverini & Ewing, Michael C. (2010). Indonesian: A Comprehensive Grammar, 2nd ed. Routledge. — Standard English-language reference; thorough morphology, syntax, and discourse. [via static/grammar-library/ind/sneddon-2010-indonesian-comprehensive-grammar.pdf]