"Saya suka kucing."

Translation: I like cats.

[morgelZorgel]

Is 'I like a cat' not correct?

[ScotiaBule]

“I like a cat” is grammatical incorrect for English, so unfortunately not.

In Indonesian the way it’s comprehended is very contextual. A noun can both be plural by using it as a singular (it can be understood by the context of the conversation), or
It
Can be used in plural form which would be “Saya suka kucing-Kucing”.

In this case they have just went for the singular phrase “kucing” and used it as “cats”

Also you have to remember in Indonesian they have shorter sentence structure and less rules in comparison to the vast complexity of English (it’s the reason why Indonesian is so easy and amazing for a English native
to learn to speak), so when directly translating into English, it sounds like it’s missing parts of sentence structure we use.

For
Example, the direct translation for “Saya suka kucing” is “I like cat”, as opposed to how it would be written grammatically in English, “I like cats”.

However when we translate other languages we try to convert it as grammatical close to how we would speak, as that’s just how translations work. It’s trying to comprehend what is said in a language and then conveying it within your own language and modifying it to fit our language and grammatical rules.

[DmitryReve]

What about "I like the cat"? It isn't accepted

[aegsh]

Is "kucing" singular and plural (cat and cats)?

[1CN5ijzC]

Indonesian noun can be single and plural, but we can stress the plural by repeating the noun

Cat is kucing
Cats are kucing-kucing

[Julian_L.]

I think that every noun in Indonesian is singular and plural.