Mahirap ang pagsusulit kapag hindi mo ginagawa ang takdang-aralin.

to be

Breakdown of Mahirap ang pagsusulit kapag hindi mo ginagawa ang takdang-aralin.

• mo: you
• hindi: not
• kapag: when

Questions & Answers about Mahirap ang pagsusulit kapag hindi mo ginagawa ang takdang-aralin.

Why does the sentence start with Mahirap instead of ang pagsusulit?

Filipino often uses predicate-first word order.

So Mahirap ang pagsusulit is literally closer to:

• Difficult is the exam

but in natural English we say:

• The exam is difficult

So nothing is missing or inverted by mistake; this is a normal Filipino sentence pattern.

What is ang doing in ang pagsusulit and ang takdang-aralin?

Ang is a marker that highlights the topic of the clause. English does not have an exact equivalent.

In this sentence:

• ang pagsusulit = the exam/test, as the topic of mahirap
• ang takdang-aralin = the homework, as the topic of ginagawa

It is not always just the English word the. Sometimes ang is translated as the, but its real job is grammatical marking, not simply definiteness.

What does pagsusulit mean exactly?