Malay has several ways to name an event, process, or result, and they do not function as interchangeable translations of English -tion, -ing, or -ment. PeN-...-an often profiles a process or organized activity, per-...-an often establishes an event, domain, or institutional sphere, and -an frequently names an outcome or product. Lexical nouns such as mesyuarat “meeting” name an event without a productive Malay nominalizing affix.
Pembangunan kawasan pesisir itu mengambil masa hampir tiga tahun.
The development of that coastal area took almost three years.
Pertemuan kedua-dua menteri berlangsung secara tertutup.
The meeting between the two ministers took place behind closed doors.
The most useful question is not “Which suffix matches English?” but “Which facet of the event does this Malay noun present?” A nominalization may foreground the unfolding process, the occasion, the institutional field, or the product that remains afterward.
For the broader contrast between lexical nouns and other ways of packaging propositions, compare fact nominalization with -nya.
peN-...-an: processes and organized activities
The circumfix conventionally written peN-...-an has predictable nasal allomorphs—pembinaan, pendaftaran, pengajaran, penjualan—but its exact form and meaning must be learned with the root. It commonly names a process, an activity viewed as a whole, or a system through which that activity occurs.
Pembinaan rumah mampu milik itu dijangka siap pada hujung tahun.
The construction of those affordable homes is expected to be completed at the end of the year.
Pendaftaran peserta akan ditutup pada pukul lima petang.
Participant registration will close at five in the afternoon.
Pengajaran bahasa memerlukan latihan yang berterusan.
Language teaching requires continuous practice.
Pembangunan profiles development, advancement, or the organized improvement of something and is especially established in formal public discourse. Pembangunan luar bandar (formal) frames a coordinated social or economic domain, not merely one person's act of building.
Kerajaan negeri memperuntukkan dana tambahan untuk pembangunan luar bandar.
The state government allocated additional funds for rural development.
This family often retains an understood patient or theme immediately after the noun: pembinaan jambatan, pendaftaran peserta, pengajaran bahasa. The following noun does not automatically identify the agent. If the agent matters, oleh can introduce it.
Pembinaan jambatan itu oleh kontraktor tempatan mendapat sokongan penduduk.
The construction of that bridge by a local contractor received residents' support.
per-...-an: events, domains, and institutional frames
Per-...-an is semantically diverse. It can name a bounded encounter or occasion, as in pertemuan “meeting/encounter”; an activity or process, as in perjalanan “journey”; or a broad field and its institutional arrangements, as in perumahan “housing” and perdagangan “trade.” There is no single English suffix that captures this range.
Pertemuan wakil penduduk dengan pihak berkuasa berlangsung selama dua jam.
The meeting between residents' representatives and the authorities lasted two hours.
Perjalanan kami dari Kota Bharu ke Kuala Terengganu berjalan lancar.
Our journey from Kota Bharu to Kuala Terengganu went smoothly.
Dasar perumahan baharu itu memberi tumpuan kepada keluarga berpendapatan rendah.
The new housing policy focuses on low-income families.
The participants follow patterns licensed by the lexical noun. Pertemuan A dengan B identifies the parties to an encounter; perjalanan kami dari X ke Y identifies travellers and route; dasar perumahan treats housing as a policy domain. Learners must acquire these frames with the noun rather than project the argument structure of an English translation.
Many per-...-an nouns are common in administrative and formal writing (formal), but forms such as pertemuan and perjalanan are also neutral in everyday narratives.
-an: products, results, and conventional nouns
The suffix -an frequently creates a noun associated with the result or product of an activity: tulisan “writing/written work” from tulis, kiriman “something sent/consignment” from kirim, and makanan “food” from makan. The noun may refer to a concrete object, a body of text, or a conventional result rather than the event itself.
Tulisan pada papan tanda itu sudah pudar dan sukar dibaca.
The writing on that sign has faded and is difficult to read.
Saya menerima kiriman daripada keluarga di Kuching pagi tadi.
I received a delivery from my family in Kuching this morning.
Makanan untuk tetamu sudah disusun di atas meja.
The food for the guests has been arranged on the table.
Tulisan can also denote a piece or style of writing, so context may shift it away from a purely concrete result. Compare proses penulisan laporan “the process of writing the report” with tulisan dalam laporan itu “the writing in that report.” Penulisan profiles the activity or practice; tulisan profiles its written manifestation.
| Perspective | Example | Typical focus |
|---|---|---|
| process/activity | penulisan laporan | the work of writing |
| result/product | tulisan dalam laporan | the text or writing produced |
| bounded occasion | pertemuan rasmi | the encounter as an event |
| institutional domain | dasar perumahan | housing as a field |
Lexical event nouns without productive nominalization
Not every event noun displays one of these circumfixes. Mesyuarat is a lexical noun meaning a planned meeting, especially in organizational contexts. It can be counted, modified, and used as a clause participant like any other noun.
Mesyuarat lembaga pengarah bermula lewat kerana pengerusinya terperangkap dalam kesesakan lalu lintas.
The board meeting started late because its chair was caught in traffic.
Kami mengadakan dua mesyuarat dalam talian minggu ini.
We held two online meetings this week.
The event is normally paired with mengadakan mesyuarat “hold a meeting,” menghadiri mesyuarat “attend a meeting,” or mesyuarat berlangsung “the meeting takes place.” Do not invent a derived form merely because the English noun looks deverbal.
Retaining participants inside the noun phrase
Event nouns can retain semantic participants, but Malay noun phrases do not reproduce a finite verb clause word for word. The event noun comes first; its theme, domain, or associated participant follows. Agents can be marked with oleh, and other roles often require a preposition such as dengan, daripada, terhadap, or untuk.
Penjualan aset syarikat kepada pelabur asing itu mendapat kelulusan lembaga.
The sale of the company's assets to that foreign investor received board approval.
Here aset syarikat is what is sold, while kepada pelabur asing itu identifies the recipient/buyer side. Compare the finite clause Syarikat itu menjual asetnya kepada pelabur asing. Nominalization makes the whole event available as the subject of mendapat kelulusan.
Pengumuman keputusan itu oleh pengerusi menamatkan segala spekulasi.
The chair's announcement of the decision ended all speculation.
Without oleh, pengumuman pengerusi can naturally mean “the chair's announcement,” but a chain such as pengumuman keputusan pengerusi is structurally ambiguous: is it the announcement of the chair's decision or the chair's announcement of a decision? Formal prose should expand the relation rather than rely on the nearest-noun guess.
Why nominalized prose feels denser
Event nouns allow writers to connect whole processes to evaluation, policy, and causation. This is useful in reporting and academic prose (formal/academic), but several nested nominalizations can conceal who did what. A finite clause is often clearer when agency is central.
Pelaksanaan sistem baharu itu meningkatkan kecekapan pemprosesan permohonan.
Implementation of the new system increased the efficiency of application processing.
The sentence is natural formal Malay, but it packages three activities as nouns: implementation, processing, and applying. In instructions to the public, a writer might unpack one or more as finite clauses for accessibility.
Common Mistakes
1. Choosing an affix by matching an English suffix
❌ Tulisasi laporan itu mengambil masa dua minggu.
Incorrect — Malay does not create a noun by copying English -ation.
✅ Penulisan laporan kewangan itu mengambil masa lebih lama daripada jangkaan.
Writing the financial report took longer than expected.
2. Using a result noun for a process without checking perspective
❌ Tulisan laporan itu mengambil masa dua minggu.
Misleading — tulisan most readily denotes the writing/text produced, not the process duration.
✅ Proses penulisan laporan akhir itu mengambil masa dua minggu.
The process of writing the final report took two weeks.
3. Treating a following noun as an unambiguous agent
❌ Pembinaan kontraktor itu siap awal.
Unclear — this can sound as though the contractor itself is what was constructed.
✅ Pembinaan bangunan itu oleh kontraktor tersebut siap lebih awal daripada jadual.
That building's construction by the contractor was completed ahead of schedule.
4. Using daripada for every English “of” participant
❌ Pembinaan daripada jambatan itu tertangguh.
Incorrect — the theme follows the event noun directly.
✅ Pembinaan jambatan itu tertangguh.
The construction of that bridge was delayed.
Key Takeaways
Malay nominalizers select perspectives. PeN-...-an often foregrounds an activity or process, per-...-an an event or institutional domain, and -an a product or result, while lexical nouns such as mesyuarat need no productive affix. Participants remain available, but their noun-phrase roles may require oleh or another preposition to stay clear.
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- Nominalization: Events, Actors, Results, and Qualities in Malaysian MalayB1 — See how peN-, -an, ke-...-an, peN-...-an, per-...-an, and unmarked roots select different facets of an event or state.
- Abstract Nouns with ke-...-an in Malaysian MalayB2 — Understand how ke-...-an forms qualities, states, lexicalized nouns, and experiences that affect a participant.
- peN-...-an: Meanings and Derivational Network in Malaysian MalayC1 — Understand how peN-...-an packages actions as processes, organized activities, results, and institutional domains.
- per-...-an: Meanings and Derivational Network in Malaysian MalayC1 — Understand how Malaysian per-...-an nouns construe bounded events, organized domains, places, collectives, and conventional systems.
- -an: Meanings and Derivational Network in Malaysian MalayB2 — Understand how -an packages conventional results of a base as products, things, instruments, places, collectives, and action-related nouns.
- Bare Verbal Roots: Overview and Formation in Malaysian MalayA1 — Recognize full unaffixed predicates in activities, colloquial transitives, imperatives, serial environments, and category-flexible roots.