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- "Kamu ini sangat memalukan."
20 Comments
1885
Is "ini" actually modifying "kamu" or is it really functioning as a kind of copula "to be"? That's something I'm familiar with from Polish.
Is "ini" actually modifying "kamu" or is it really functioning as a kind of copula "to be"? That's something I'm familiar with from Polish.
Hmmm...I'm sorry about the second part, I don't know what a copula is, a verb ?
I think you could see it as a sort of replacement for 'to be'.
'ini' is not really modifying 'kamu', except that it puts extra emphasis.
In the spoken language there is a short silence after 'ini' , and a change of intonation before the sentence continues.
Although this sentence works absolutely fine without "ini", it's very normal to say it like this.
- 1885
I'm the one who should be sorry. That's precisely what a copula is, the "to be" that links a noun with a noun or adjective. It looks like Indonesian usually doesn't need one, like Russian and Turkish. Here, it looks like it is using the word for "this," which is precisely what Polish (and I think maybe Ukrainian) sometimes does.
Aha..okay...so that's a copula.
It links the noun 'kamu' with the rest.
The rest in this sentence is actually an active transitive verb (with an adjective base).
I have a hard time un-teaching this habit in some of my Polish students.
They'll often say things like "the weather today it isn't very nice", "Kraków it is a beautiful city" etc.
- 1106
I still do not understand... a wild guess: does ini here refers to a particular behaviour at the moment? e.g. You wear a T-shirt to a wedding ceremony, then we would say "You are embarrassing wearing like that" or in Indonesian "Kamu ini sangat memalukan", ini referring to your wearing a T-shirt. However if I just think that you are embarrassing as a person and whatever you do is embarrassing, we would say "Kamu sangat memalukan." Am I right?
In Chinese there is something similar, people say 'this you' sometimes, but they use it when they want to "criticize", "mock" or just simply add emphasis at something you do. It looks like it is the same in Indonesian. The comparison to Slavic grammar is cute, but unrelated.
- 1484
In other places, I've seen "itu" used the same way as "ini" here, as a copula. Is there any difference in meaning, or a rule for which to use?
I love reading the posts you guys write ... I am learning heaps (including when you correct my comments when I am trying to be helpful but get it wrong ... which fortunately hasn't been too often). All of my learning has been from a few simple books and lots of translating texts; plus chatting to Indo people.
- 1885
Honestly, I learn as much from helpful people like you and Rick in some of these fora as I do from the lessons.
How is it going so far ?
No times/tenses/verb conjugations/genders/articles/etc...Indonesian is easy to learn, I think.
Or am I wrong ?
- 1885
Great. It is wonderfully easy. Really, memorizing the somewhat exotic vocabulary is the only difficulty at all, and even that is made easier when the word is nearly the same in Hindi, Turkish, or Dutch.
Oh, and you left out that it is written phonetically in Roman letters.
Yes, that's true, there are words from Sanskrit, Arabic, Dutch, Portuguese, etc.. origin.
Regarding the vocabulary, I think it's a matter of knowing a lot of base words and knowing how the affixes function.
Those two combined will give you an enormous vocabulary.
The sentence structure is also pretty straightforward.
I'm only seeing positive things ... hahahaha...
