The turun family separates downward path, caused change, and statistical trend. Turun presents a subject descending, getting off, or becoming lower. Menuruni selects the path traversed downward, menurunkan adds a causer, and menurun presents a sustained decline. The nouns penurunan and keturunan are established family members with very different meanings.
No person or tense endings
These forms do not conjugate for person or tense. Time and viewpoint come from context and separate words.
| Context | Indonesian | Cue |
|---|---|---|
| I, now | saya turun dari bus | context |
| she, earlier | tadi dia turun dari bus | tadi |
| they, ongoing | mereka sedang turun dari bus | sedang |
| we, later | nanti kami akan turun dari bus | nanti, akan |
Saya turun dari bus di depan kantor pos.
I get off the bus in front of the post office.
Tadi dia turun dari bus sambil membawa dua tas.
Earlier she got off the bus carrying two bags.
Nanti kami akan turun dari bus di halte terakhir.
Later we will get off the bus at the final stop.
English get off, got off, and will get off correspond to unchanged turun plus context. The base is not an infinitive and takes no agreement ending.
turun: the subject goes down or becomes lower
With physical movement, the moving participant is the subject. Dari marks the source, ke can mark a lower destination, and di can identify the place where someone gets off.
Anak-anak turun ke halaman setelah hujan berhenti.
The children go down to the yard after the rain stops.
Kabut turun perlahan dari puncak bukit.
Mist descends slowly from the hilltop.
Penumpang diminta turun melalui pintu sebelah kiri.
Passengers are asked to get off through the door on the left.
Ia turun dari sepeda untuk menyeberangi jembatan sempit.
She gets off her bicycle to cross the narrow bridge.
With measures and conditions, turun is intransitive: the price, temperature, level, weight, or performance itself declines.
Harga tomat turun setelah pasokan dari desa bertambah.
Tomato prices fell after supplies from the villages increased.
Suhu udara turun tajam menjelang subuh.
The air temperature drops sharply before dawn.
Berat badannya turun tiga kilogram dalam dua bulan.
Her weight dropped three kilograms in two months.
Nilai tukar kembali turun pada perdagangan sore.
The exchange rate fell again in afternoon trading. (formal)
menuruni: the downward path as object
Menuruni is transitive and selects what the actor travels down: stairs, a slope, a road, a valley, or a river. The object is the traversed path or surface, not an item made lower.
Kami menuruni tangga darurat karena lift tidak berfungsi.
We go down the emergency stairs because the lift is not working.
Para pendaki menuruni lereng sebelum cuaca memburuk.
The hikers descend the slope before the weather worsens.
Sepeda itu melaju cepat menuruni jalan yang curam.
The bicycle moves quickly down the steep road.
Mereka menuruni sungai dengan perahu kecil selama dua hari.
They travel down the river in a small boat for two days.
Compare turun tangga and menuruni tangga. Both occur, but turun tangga is the ordinary motion expression, while menuruni tangga more explicitly profiles the staircase as the path traversed.
Nenek turun tangga sambil memegang pegangan tangga.
Grandma goes downstairs while holding the handrail.
Petugas menuruni tangga selangkah demi selangkah untuk memeriksa setiap lantai.
The officer descends the stairs one step at a time to inspect every floor.
menurunkan: cause something to descend or decrease
Menurunkan is transitive. Its subject causes the following object to move down, leave a vehicle, or become lower in amount, intensity, or rank.
Supermarket menurunkan harga buah menjelang waktu tutup.
The supermarket lowers fruit prices near closing time.
Sopir menurunkan penumpang di depan rumah sakit.
The driver drops passengers off in front of the hospital.
Pekerja menurunkan peti dari bak truk dengan hati-hati.
The workers lower a crate from the truck bed carefully.
Tolong turunkan volume musik setelah pukul sepuluh.
Please turn the music down after ten o'clock.
Dokter menyarankan saya menurunkan berat badan secara bertahap.
The doctor advises me to lose weight gradually.
Compare uncaused and caused change:
Tekanan darahnya turun setelah ia beristirahat.
Her blood pressure fell after she rested.
Obat itu membantu menurunkan tekanan darahnya.
The medicine helps lower her blood pressure.
General causative behavior of -kan is covered in the word-formation guide. In actual words, menurunkan is written solid.
menurun: a downward trend
Menurun is an intransitive actor-voice-looking derivative with a lexical trend meaning: decline, deteriorate, or decrease over time. Unlike most meN- verbs, it does not take a direct object in this use. It is common in reports, analysis, and careful speech.
Kualitas udara terus menurun selama musim kemarau.
Air quality continues to decline during the dry season.
Penjualan toko itu menurun sejak jalan utama ditutup.
The shop's sales have declined since the main road was closed.
Kondisi pasien sempat menurun pada malam kedua.
The patient's condition deteriorated briefly on the second night.
Minat pembaca perlahan menurun setelah edisi ketiga.
Reader interest gradually declined after the third edition.
Turun can report a simple lower result or everyday event; menurun readily portrays an unfolding trend. They overlap, and this is partly lexical preference rather than a perfectly mechanical rule.
Passive menurunkan: diturunkan
The object of menurunkan becomes the subject of diturunkan. An agent may follow or remain unexpressed.
Harga tiket diturunkan setelah banyak penumpang mengeluh.
Ticket prices were lowered after many passengers complained.
Kotak itu diturunkan dari rak oleh petugas gudang.
The box is lowered from the shelf by the warehouse worker.
Pasien diturunkan dari ambulans dengan tandu.
The patient is taken out of the ambulance on a stretcher.
Target produksi diturunkan menjadi delapan ratus unit.
The production target is reduced to eight hundred units. (formal)
Write passive di- solid in diturunkan; locative di remains separate in di rumah sakit.
penurunan: a decline or lowering process
Penurunan is a process or result noun used with measures, quality, rates, physical descent, and institutional reduction. It is frequent in formal and analytical registers.
Penurunan harga minyak belum terasa bagi konsumen.
The fall in oil prices has not yet been felt by consumers.
Laporan itu mencatat penurunan jumlah kecelakaan.
The report records a decline in the number of accidents. (formal)
Proses penurunan barang dimulai setelah truk diparkir.
The unloading process begins after the truck is parked.
Penurunan kualitas layanan memicu banyak keluhan.
The decline in service quality triggered many complaints.
Context decides whether penurunan is spontaneous decline or deliberate lowering; the noun itself can package either event.
keturunan: descendants and ancestry
Keturunan is a lexicalized noun meaning descendant, offspring, lineage, or ancestry. It is historically related to turun, but it does not mean “decrease.” Learn it as an independent family member.
Ia merupakan keturunan keluarga pedagang dari pesisir utara.
She is descended from a merchant family from the north coast.
Keluarga besar itu memiliki keturunan yang tersebar di beberapa pulau.
That extended family has descendants spread across several islands.
Penyakit tersebut dapat diwariskan kepada keturunan.
The disease can be inherited by descendants.
Banyak warga di kampung itu keturunan perantau dari Sulawesi.
Many residents of that village are descended from migrants from Sulawesi.
For an individual's ethnicity, keturunan X is descriptively possible, but identity labels can be socially sensitive; use the person's own preferred description rather than imposing ancestry as their primary identity.
Fixed combinations
Akhirnya pemerintah turun tangan untuk menyelesaikan sengketa.
The government finally intervened to resolve the dispute.
Resep ini diwariskan turun-temurun dalam keluarga kami.
This recipe has been passed down through generations in our family.
Turun tangan means intervene or personally get involved. Turun-temurun is a fixed reduplicated form meaning across generations and correctly uses a hyphen.
Common Mistakes
Giving the path to menurunkan
❌ Kami menurunkan tangga menuju ruang bawah tanah.
Incorrect for descending the stairs — menurunkan requires something caused to go down.
✅ Kami menuruni tangga menuju ruang bawah tanah.
We descend the stairs toward the basement.
Omitting the causative form with an actor
❌ Toko itu turun harga semua buah sore ini.
Incorrect in careful Standard Indonesian — the shop causes the decrease.
✅ Toko itu menurunkan harga semua buah sore ini.
The shop is lowering all fruit prices this afternoon.
Giving menurun a direct object
❌ Manajer menurun biaya operasional tahun ini.
Incorrect — trend verb menurun is intransitive; deliberate reduction uses menurunkan.
✅ Manajer menurunkan biaya operasional tahun ini.
The manager is reducing operating costs this year.
Separating passive di-
❌ Volume pengeras suara di turunkan setelah ditegur.
Incorrect spelling — passive di- attaches to the verb.
✅ Volume pengeras suara diturunkan setelah ditegur.
The loudspeaker volume was lowered after a warning.
Treating keturunan as a decrease noun
❌ Keturunan penjualan mencapai dua puluh persen.
Incorrect — keturunan means descendants or ancestry, not a decline.
✅ Penurunan penjualan mencapai dua puluh persen.
The decline in sales reached twenty percent.
Key Takeaways
- Turun gives the descending or decreasing entity subject status; menuruni selects the downward path.
- Menurunkan adds a causer and object, while menurun is an intransitive trend verb.
- Penurunan names decline or lowering; keturunan is a lexical noun for descendants or ancestry.
- Keep aspect words separate, write real derivatives solid, and reserve hyphens for forms such as turun-temurun.
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Start learning Indonesian →Related Topics
- naik, menaiki, and menaikkan: Verb Family and UsageB1 — Distinguish a moving or rising subject with naik, a traversed object with menaiki, and caused upward change with menaikkan.
- -i: Meanings and Derivational NetworkB2 — Understand how -i maps locations, goals, recipients, and repeatedly affected targets onto direct-object position across productive and lexicalized families.
- -kan: Meanings and Derivational NetworkC1 — Understand how -kan adds or promotes participants in causative, caused-result, benefactive, transfer, and lexicalized verb families.
- 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.
- ke-...-an: Meanings and Derivational NetworkB2 — Connect abstract qualities, states, excessive degree, affected experiences, and lexical domains within the ke-...-an network.
- -kan Valency Patterns: Subjects, Objects, and Argument OrderB2 — Identify actors, caused themes, affected objects, beneficiaries, and secondary themes in -kan clauses across active, passive, and object voice.