The jual family describes a transaction from several perspectives. Menjual foregrounds the seller's action, dijual presents the goods as undergoing or being offered in a selling event, and terjual highlights the achieved result: a buyer has been found and the item is no longer available. Penjual, penjualan, and jual beli then name participants and commercial activities.
No person or tense endings
The forms never agree with the subject and never acquire tense endings. Time and aspect remain separate.
| Function | Form | Central perspective |
|---|---|---|
| Instruction/object voice | jual | sell |
| Actor voice | menjual | seller performs sale |
| Event passive | dijual | goods offered/sold |
| Resultative | terjual | goods successfully sold |
| Seller noun | penjual | seller, vendor |
| Event/result noun | penjualan | selling, sales |
| Fixed compound | jual beli | buying and selling, trade |
Keluarga itu menjual rumah lama mereka setelah pindah kota.
That family sold their old house after moving to another city.
Tahun lalu koperasi menjual beras langsung kepada warga.
Last year the cooperative sold rice directly to residents.
Bulan depan toko ini akan menjual produk dari pengrajin lokal.
Next month this shop will sell products from local craftspeople.
English sell, sold, and will sell correspond to unchanged menjual plus context. The actor-voice form is menjual, with men- before the base jual.
Bare jual: instructions and object voice
Bare jual is ordinary in commands and after a definite first- or second-person agent in object voice. It is not a general infinitive.
Jual sepeda itu hanya kalau biaya perbaikannya terlalu besar.
Sell that bicycle only if the repair cost is too high.
Tolong jual tiket cadangan ini kepada orang yang benar-benar membutuhkan.
Please sell this spare ticket to someone who genuinely needs it.
Lukisan kecil itu saya jual untuk membayar biaya kursus.
I sold that small painting to pay the course fee.
Barang mana yang akan kamu jual di bazar sekolah?
Which items will you sell at the school fair?
The fronted goods are central in lukisan itu saya jual. Careful actor-oriented prose uses saya menjual lukisan itu. Actor-first saya jual is also common (informal) speech, but the contrast is one of voice and register, not time.
Menjual: a seller transfers goods for value
Menjual is transitive: its subject is the seller and its object is the item, service, right, or asset offered in exchange for money or another value. A buyer can follow kepada, and price is commonly expressed with seharga or dengan harga.
Petani menjual hasil panen kepada pedagang di pasar induk.
Farmers sell their harvest to traders at the wholesale market.
Mereka menjual mobil itu seharga delapan puluh juta rupiah.
They sold the car for eighty million rupiah.
Perusahaan rintisan tersebut menjual layanan penyimpanan data kepada usaha kecil.
That startup sells data-storage services to small businesses.
Warung depan sekolah menjual makanan ringan dan alat tulis.
The stall in front of the school sells snacks and stationery.
English sometimes says a product sells well, with the product as grammatical subject. Indonesian usually chooses resultative laku or terjual, rather than actor-voice menjual with the product as an agent.
Kue buatan Bu Sinta laku keras menjelang hari raya.
Mrs. Sinta's cakes sell extremely well before the holiday.
Some collocations extend the commercial metaphor. Nilai jual is marketability or a selling point; menjual nama means exploiting someone's reputation, usually critically.
Lokasi dekat stasiun menjadi nilai jual utama apartemen itu.
The location near the station is that apartment's main selling point.
Ia dituduh menjual nama keluarganya untuk mendapat proyek.
He was accused of exploiting his family name to secure projects.
These are lexicalized combinations; do not extend their English translations mechanically.
Dijual: the selling event or an offer for sale
Dijual makes the goods the passive subject. It can report an actual selling event, but without a completed-time context it very often means is/are for sale—the item is being offered.
Rumah di ujung jalan itu dijual oleh pemiliknya.
The house at the end of the road is being sold by its owner.
Tiket tambahan dijual mulai pukul sepuluh pagi.
Additional tickets go on sale starting at ten in the morning.
Produk ini hanya dijual melalui distributor resmi.
This product is sold only through authorized distributors.
Tanah tersebut dijual pemerintah melalui lelang terbuka.
The government sold the land through an open auction.
Dijual does not itself guarantee that a buyer was found. A sign reading Rumah dijual announces availability, not completion.
Di pagar depan terpasang papan bertuliskan Rumah Dijual.
A sign reading House for Sale is attached to the front fence.
Write passive di- solid in dijual, while locative di is separate in di pagar.
Terjual: the sale has achieved its result
Terjual profiles the resulting state or achieved outcome: the item has sold. It commonly combines with sudah, quantities, time spans, and result-oriented adverbs. Unlike dijual, it normally entails that a transaction succeeded.
Rumah itu akhirnya terjual setelah enam bulan ditawarkan.
The house finally sold after being offered for six months.
Seribu tiket terjual dalam waktu kurang dari satu jam.
One thousand tickets sold in less than an hour.
Semua ukuran kecil sudah terjual sebelum toko tutup.
All the small sizes had sold out before the shop closed.
Hanya separuh hasil panen yang terjual dengan harga wajar.
Only half the harvest sold at a fair price.
Compare the event/offer and result directly:
Apartemen itu dijual sejak awal tahun, tetapi belum terjual.
The apartment has been for sale since the beginning of the year, but it has not sold yet.
The distinction resembles English is for sale versus has been sold, but Indonesian encodes it through voice/result morphology rather than tense. The general resultative system is treated in ter- meanings.
Penjual: the seller or vendor
Penjual names the selling participant. A following noun commonly identifies the goods: penjual makanan, penjual bunga, penjual tiket.
Penjual makanan itu mulai menyiapkan dagangan sebelum subuh.
That food vendor starts preparing her goods before dawn.
Pembeli diminta memeriksa identitas penjual sebelum mentransfer uang.
Buyers are asked to verify the seller's identity before transferring money.
Para penjual bunga memenuhi trotoar menjelang acara wisuda.
Flower sellers fill the sidewalk before the graduation ceremony.
The noun can refer to a person, shop, or commercial account when context treats that entity as the seller.
Platform akan menahan pembayaran sampai penjual mengirim barang.
The platform will hold the payment until the seller ships the item.
Penjualan: selling, sales, or a sale total
Penjualan profiles the selling process, commercial function, or measured sales result. Its English translation depends on the collocation.
Penjualan tiket dibuka dua minggu sebelum pertunjukan.
Ticket sales open two weeks before the performance.
Angka penjualan kendaraan listrik naik pada kuartal kedua.
Electric-vehicle sales figures rose in the second quarter.
Tim penjualan sedang menyiapkan presentasi untuk klien baru.
The sales team is preparing a presentation for a new client.
Hasil penjualan buku akan disumbangkan ke perpustakaan desa.
The proceeds from the book sale will be donated to the village library.
Penjual is a participant; penjualan is an event, department, total, or proceeds depending on its modifier.
Jual beli: buying and selling as one activity
The fixed two-word compound jual beli presents both sides of a transaction and commonly means trade, commerce, or purchase and sale. It remains two words.
Perjanjian jual beli rumah harus dibaca dengan teliti.
A house sale-and-purchase agreement must be read carefully.
Kegiatan jual beli di pasar berhenti saat listrik padam.
Trading activity in the market stopped when the power went out.
Situs itu menjadi tempat jual beli barang bekas antarwarga.
That site became a place for residents to buy and sell used goods.
This compound is lexicalized: its conventional legal and commercial uses are not simply a productive instruction to place any two opposite roots side by side.
Common Mistakes
Marking a buyer as the source
❌ Perusahaan itu menjual layanan baru dari dua sekolah.
Incorrect for selling the service to the schools — dari marks a source.
✅ Perusahaan itu menjual layanan baru kepada dua sekolah.
The company sells a new service to two schools.
Adding an English past ending
❌ Tahun lalu mereka menjual-ed kebun keluarga.
Incorrect — menjual does not take an English past-tense suffix.
✅ Tahun lalu mereka menjual kebun keluarga untuk biaya sekolah.
Last year they sold the family orchard to pay school costs.
Treating dijual as proof of a completed sale
❌ Papan “Rumah dijual” berarti rumah itu sudah mendapat pembeli.
Incorrect interpretation—the sign only announces that the house is for sale; it does not assert a completed transaction.
✅ Rumah itu baru terjual tiga minggu setelah papan iklan dipasang.
The house finally sold three weeks after the sign was put up.
Making the product an actor with menjual
❌ Buku baru itu menjual sangat baik bulan ini.
Incorrect English calque — the book is not the agent of menjual.
✅ Buku baru itu terjual dalam jumlah besar bulan ini.
The new book has sold in large numbers this month.
Separating passive di-
❌ Peralatan bekas itu di jual melalui lelang daring.
Incorrect spelling — passive di- attaches to jual.
✅ Peralatan bekas itu dijual melalui lelang daring.
The used equipment is sold through an online auction.
Key Takeaways
- Menjual selects the goods sold; bare jual occurs in instructions and object voice.
- Dijual profiles an offer or selling event, whereas terjual entails an achieved sale result.
- Penjual names the seller; penjualan names selling, sales, a department, or a measured sales total.
- Jual beli is a fixed two-word compound for buying and selling or trade.
Now practice Indonesian
Reading grammar gets you part of the way. The exercises are where it sticks — free, no signup needed.
Start learning Indonesian →Related Topics
- beli and membelikan: Verb Family and UsageB1 — Distinguish membeli, dibeli, and benefactive membelikan, then use pembeli and pembelian in their established roles.
- ter-: Meanings and Derivational NetworkC1 — Connect stative, uncontrolled, abilitative, and superlative ter- readings through low actor control and prominence of a result or endpoint.
- ter- Involuntary and Stative Voice: Aspect, Modality, and NegationC1 — Combine ter- predicates with aspect, future, possibility, and negation while preserving Indonesian particle order and the construction's stative or low-control meaning.
- di- Passive: Overview and FormationA1 — Recognize and form the Indonesian di- passive, where an affected patient is subject and a third-person agent may follow or remain unspoken.
- peN-: Meanings and Derivational NetworkC1 — Explore how peN- nouns name agents, professions, habitual participants, instruments, characteristic types, and lexicalized functional or result concepts.
- peN-...-an: Meanings and Derivational NetworkC1 — Understand how peN-...-an nominalizes events as processes, organized activities, results, and lexicalized institutions while preserving their participants conceptually.