"Mereka pesan kopi, namun mereka tidak pesan makanan."

Translation: They ordered coffee, however they did not order food.

[SamForward]

Namun is usually translated as 'however', as it's more formal than 'tapi' for 'but'.

[Sam67858]

Agreed

[Bjooorn1]

Why is the answer past tense?

[chuman205]

It is one possible translation. "They order coffee, but they do not order food" would also be correct.

[yookoala]

To my understanding, there is no tense in Bahasa. The time which a sentence is referring depends only on the conversation context. Using pass tense for the sentence seems more logical in general.

Although you can argue this is a conversation between waiters, in which case, describing a gang of usual customers that always only order coffee in the waiters' restaurant.

[mapmanic]

Or you coukd look at it as a script (where description of actions which take place onstage are not tensed). In fact, this perspective on non-tensed languages might be helpful for those of us coming from tensed languages to be more accepting.

[Barbra903822]

Namun is more accurate as "however" and should be considered correct

[qZzR1d1d]

What makes this answer past tense for ‘ordered’ instead of ‘order’? How can you tell?

[cafe_disco]

In English we mark tense on our verbs, but Indonesian doesn't. It's all understood through context. But if you want to make the time explicit, you can use adverbs. For example, "sudah" indicates that a verb was completed in the past, and "akan" indicates that the verb will take place in the future.

So, for this sentence ("Mereka pesan kopi, namun mereka tidak pesan makanan"), past tense is just one option. It can also be translated as "they are ordering coffee, but they aren't ordering food."

Hope that helped.

[QuerulousFalcon]

Wouldn't "They ordered coffee, but did not order food" also work?

[bigglyguy]

It should do. I must admit to being a little frustrated to feel this course is judging my English (I'm a native English speaker) when what I'm actually trying to do is get into the mind and way of speaking of an Indonesian!

[Keith_APP]

A user explained that Namun should only be used at the beginning.Is it wrong here or there is no such rule?

[aine736172]

Is pesan the same as memesan ...same meaning? Thanks

[edl6lr]

I DON'T KNOW WHY THIS APP GIVE SYNONYMOUS IF THE DO NOT ACCEPT THEM. ❤❤❤❤❤❤❤ ANNOYING

[hayatisega]

'however' is a direct translation for namun, but no one speaking English would actually use 'however' in this context. It's formal and not used in conversation.