Indonesian/Grammar/Verbs

Indonesian verbs do not change depending on tense, as in English. For example, English has different forms for "ate" (past tense) and "eat" (present tense), while Indonesian uses "makan" for both past and present. When it is important to specify time, Indonesian adds additional words that clarify the time, such as "sudah" (already), "masih" (still), and "akan" (will).

Some of basic verbs

Indonesian	English	Notes
Baca	Read
Bangun	Wake up	literally the act of waking up
Buka	Open
Buang	Throw away	as in "throwing away the trash"
Bunuh	Kill
Gantung	Hang
Hapus	Erase
Jahit	Sew
Jalan	Walk
Makan	Eat
Masak	Cook
Minum	Drink
Lempar	Throw	as in "throwing the ball"
Pakai	Wear/Use
Robek	Tear
Lari	Run
Tanya	Ask
Tidur	Sleep
Tinju	Punch
Tulis	Write
Tutup	Close

To be or not to be

To be is the most common English verb, yet its indonesian translation, adalah, is rarely used. This is particularly true when it is used to describe something/someone or to give characteristics. For instance :

• Aku cowok = I am a man
• Dia gemuk = He is fat
• Aku lapar = I am hungry

We can use adalah to make a statement that two things are equivalent. For instance:

• Rusia adalah negara terbesar di dunia.
• Russia is the largest country in the world.

Another use of adalah is to say that something or someone is part of a grup/structure. For instance:

• Dia adalah pengawai pemerintah
• He is a government employee.

Inflection

The Indonesian verbs can be also inflected as well for passivity, causativity, etc.. Unlike its closely-related Tagalog, Indonesian and Malay conjugation system are more simplified, but more inflected than related Hawaiian and Maori. In Indonesian itself, the term "konjugasi" it is usually not used when talking about Indonesian, instead it is only used for foreign languages. The Indonesian conjugation is not inflected for tenses, but only for voice and moods (for the tenses, see /Grammar/Tenses, tenses are instead analytically formed). Nonetheless, it still has many exceptions, despite there are just very few affixes, mostly due to defectivity, for example berlari, memperlari, melarikan is acceptable, but not for *berlarii. Some cases may cause the verb forms change substantially (hijau "green" → menghijau "to become green" → terhijau "most green", instead of "accidentally became green", but terhijaukan "became greened"; tinggal "live" → meninggal "died").

Lemma forms of the verbs are always in the root (memakan ← makan "eat").

Examples of the simple conjugation of ulang "repeat"

	meng-	ter-	di-	-lah	-∅
-∅	mengulang	terulang	diulang	ulanglah	ulang
per-	memperulang	terperulang	diperulang	perulanglah	perulang
-i	mengulangi	terulangi	diulangi	ulangilah	ulangi
-kan	mengulangkan	terulangkan	diulangkan	ulangkanlah	ulangkan

Approximate meanings

	meng-	ter-	di-	-lah	-∅
-∅	repeating	being repeated (accidentally)	being repeated	repeat! (jussive)	repeat!
per-	making repeated	making being repeated (accidentally)	making being repeated	make (this) repeated! (jussive)	make (this) repeated!
-i	repeating (directly)	being repeated (accidentally, directly)	being repeated (directly)	repeat! (jussive, directly)	repeat! (directly)
-kan	repeating (transitivized)	being repeated (accidentally, transitivized)	being repeated (transitivized)	repeat! (jussive, transitivized)	repeat! (transitivized)

Affixes vertically, when in the case of suffix -lah, only can precede the suffix. Informally, the -kan suffix can be replaced with -in, and the meng- suffix is also replaced with their mutated first consonants (ny-, ng-, ...), resulting on these forms:

-in	ngulangin	terulangin	diulangin	ulanginlah	ulangin

When transitive, the verb is also added with possessive suffixes:

	I	you	he/she/it
mengulangi	mengulangiku	mengulangimu	mengulanginya

Note: The prefix meng- are subject to the initial consonant change! (see also /prefix me)