EYD V places a hyphen between the elements of an Indonesian reduplicated form: anak-anak, berjalan-jalan, sayur-mayur, porak-poranda. The hyphen tells the reader that the linked material forms one morphological word. It is not a general mark for anything a speaker happens to repeat.
This page covers the spelling of full, affixed, and changing-sound reduplication. The reduplication overview explains the many grammatical meanings separately.
Full reduplication: join both copies with a hyphen
When the full base is repeated, write both occurrences and place a hyphen between them, with no spaces around it: anak-anak “children,” buku-buku “books,” rumah-rumah “houses,” hati-hati “careful.”
| Base | Reduplicated form | Not |
|---|---|---|
| anak | anak-anak | anak anak; anak - anak |
| buku | buku-buku | bukubuku |
| rumah | rumah-rumah | rumah2 |
| hati | hati-hati | hati hati |
Anak-anak sedang bermain di halaman belakang.
The children are playing in the backyard.
Buku-buku lama itu akan disumbangkan ke perpustakaan desa.
Those old books will be donated to the village library.
Hati-hati, lantainya masih basah.
Be careful, the floor is still wet.
At the beginning of a sentence, capitalize only the beginning of the complete form: Anak-anak, not Anak-Anak. Both copies remain lowercase inside a sentence unless a separate capitalization rule applies.
Affixed reduplication: do not duplicate visible affixes mechanically
An affixed reduplicated word can show an affix only once while the base material is linked by a hyphen. For example, berjalan-jalan has visible ber- on the first element, not on both; mencari-cari similarly has men- once. A circumfixed pattern such as kemerah-merahan shows ke- at the beginning and -an at the end of the whole form.
| Correct form | Visible pattern | Incorrect mechanical copy |
|---|---|---|
| berjalan-jalan | ber- + jalan-jalan | berjalan-berjalan |
| mencari-cari | men- + cari-cari | mencari-mencari |
| kemerah-merahan | ke- + merah-merah + -an | kemerahan-kemerahan |
| rumah-rumahan | rumah-rumah + -an | rumahan-rumahan |
The analytic plus signs and hyphens in the middle column explain morphology; only the first column gives the ordinary spelling. Specific affixed patterns must still be learned as words and constructions. The principle is not “delete any affix that repeats,” but “write the established reduplicated form, not two independently affixed words.”
Kami berjalan-jalan di sekitar kota tua setelah makan malam.
We walked around the old town after dinner.
Saya sudah mencari-cari kunci itu sejak pagi.
I've been looking all over for that key since this morning.
Langit mulai kemerah-merahan menjelang matahari terbenam.
The sky began to turn reddish toward sunset.
English has no productive written system exactly like this. Repetition is usually written as separate words for rhetorical effect, so English-speaking learners may either omit the Indonesian hyphen or treat both halves as full independent words. Indonesian orthography instead records the whole derived unit.
Changing-sound reduplication still takes a hyphen
The two elements do not have to be identical. In changing-sound or rhyming reduplication, vowels or consonants differ, but EYD V still links the elements with a hyphen: sayur-mayur “all kinds of vegetables,” porak-poranda “in complete disarray,” lauk-pauk “various side dishes,” gerak-gerik “movements; behavior.”
Ibu membeli sayur-mayur segar di pasar pagi.
Mom bought assorted fresh vegetables at the morning market.
Ruang tamu porak-poranda setelah diterjang angin kencang.
The living room was in complete disarray after being hit by strong winds.
Kami menyiapkan nasi dan lauk-pauk untuk semua tamu.
We prepared rice and assorted side dishes for all the guests.
These forms must be learned lexically; a writer cannot freely replace sounds in any noun and assume a new standard word exists. The orthographic insight is narrower: once the conventional form is reduplicative, the changing sounds do not remove the hyphen.
A repeated phrase is not automatically a reduplicated word
Speakers repeat independent words for insistence, hesitation, correction, or dramatic effect. That syntactic or discourse repetition is punctuated as a sequence, not fused into a morphological word.
“Pergi, pergi sekarang!” teriak penjaga itu.
“Go, go now!” the guard shouted.
Here the speaker utters the command pergi twice for insistence. A comma separates two repeated commands. Writing pergi-pergi sekarang would tell the reader to look for a reduplicated lexical or grammatical unit rather than rhetorical repetition.
Compare that with pelan-pelan “slowly,” an established reduplicated form:
Pelan-pelan saja; jalannya licin.
Just go slowly; the road is slippery.
The hyphen therefore marks morphological unity, not merely an acoustic echo.
Do not use the digit 2 in edited prose
In texts and personal notes, Indonesians sometimes write anak2, buku2, or forms with a superscript ² as an informal digital shortcut. The convention is easy to recognize, but it is not EYD V spelling for edited prose. Write the repeated element in full: anak-anak, buku-buku.
Dalam pengumuman itu, anak-anak diminta membawa buku masing-masing.
In the announcement, the children are asked to bring their own books.
The restriction applies especially to formal, academic, journalistic, and professional writing. Even in an informal message, full spelling is always correct and clearer to readers or software that may not interpret the shortcut.
Indonesian ordinary orthography uses no mandatory accent marks. Neither accents nor a multiplication sign replace the EYD V hyphen-and-full-copy pattern.
Common Mistakes
1. Writing full reduplication as separate words
❌ Anak anak itu menunggu di luar kelas.
Incorrect — the reduplicated word requires a hyphen.
✅ Anak-anak itu menunggu di luar kelas.
The children are waiting outside the classroom.
2. Repeating a visible prefix twice
❌ Kami berjalan-berjalan di taman.
Incorrect — this mechanically repeats the visible ber- prefix.
✅ Kami berjalan-jalan di taman.
We took a walk in the park.
3. Omitting the hyphen in a changing-sound form
❌ Meja itu penuh dengan sayur mayur.
Incorrect — the established form sayur-mayur is hyphenated.
✅ Meja itu penuh dengan sayur-mayur.
The table is covered with assorted vegetables.
4. Using digit 2 in edited prose
❌ Anak2 harus memakai seragam pada hari Senin.
Incorrect — digit 2 is a nonstandard shortcut here.
✅ Anak-anak harus memakai seragam pada hari Senin.
The children must wear uniforms on Monday.
Key Takeaways
- Link full reduplication with a closed-up hyphen: anak-anak.
- Preserve the established affixed pattern: berjalan-jalan, not berjalan-berjalan.
- Changing-sound forms remain hyphenated: sayur-mayur, porak-poranda.
- Use punctuation, not a hyphen, when independent words are merely repeated for emphasis.
- Replace anak2 with anak-anak in edited prose.
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Start learning Indonesian →Related Topics
- Attaching Prefixes and SuffixesA2 — Write ordinary Indonesian affixes solid with lowercase bases and use boundary hyphens around capitalized or acronym bases.
- Writing -ku, -mu, -nya, ku-, and kau-A2 — Attach Indonesian bound pronouns on the side selected by their syntactic role and place punctuation outside the complete word.
- Reduplication: An Indonesian Grammar MapA2 — Map the major forms and meanings of Indonesian reduplication without mistaking every repeated word for a plural.
- Affixes Around Full ReduplicationB1 — Use morphological bracketing to place prefixes, suffixes, and clitics around the correct copied base.
- Changing-Sound ReduplicationB2 — Recognize conventional reduplicative pairs whose second element changes sound to evoke variety, behavior, intensity, or an expressive scene.
- The Informal Digit 2 for RepetitionA2 — Recognize digit-2 repetition in historical texts and casual messages while replacing it with full hyphenated spelling in edited prose.