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- "Kucing ini merusak langit-la…
15 Comments
IanWitham1
771
"Butterfly" is "kupu-kupu" and "dolphin" is "lumba-lumba". I do not understand why there are some Indonesian nouns that look like plurals but are singular. English has "sheep", and "deer", and "moose", which are the same whether there is one of them or a billion of them.
squeekeek
167
Reduplication of nouns have meanings other than pluralization, such as labeling a thing that has a similar concept as that of the root word. In this example, "Langit" means sky. But reduplicating it means a its-a-sky-thingy, which in this case, it's a ceiling.
There are other examples similar to "langit-langit", like:
- rumah -> house
- rumah-rumahan -> playhouse
- gula -> sugar
- gula-gula -> candy, same as "permen"
- tiba -> arrive, same as "datang"
- tiba-tiba -> suddenly