Dia hampir tenggelam di sungai itu.

Dia can mean either he or she. Indonesian third-person singular pronouns usually do not show gender, so you understand the person’s sex from context.

A few useful notes:

• dia is common in everyday speech and writing.
• A more formal/literary variant is ia.
• Indonesian often avoids using pronouns as much as English does if the context is already clear.

Strictly speaking, you do not know from the sentence alone. Indonesian verbs do not change form for tense the way English verbs do.

So Dia hampir tenggelam di sungai itu could mean:

• He/she almost drowned in that river
• He/she is almost drowning in that river
• in some contexts even a future-like meaning, though that is less likely here

Usually, the time is understood from context. If you want to make past time clear, you can add words like:

• kemarin = yesterday
• tadi = earlier / just now

For example:

• Dia hampir tenggelam di sungai itu kemarin.

Hampir means almost. It modifies tenggelam, so hampir tenggelam means almost drowned or more literally almost sank/went under.

Its position before the verb is normal:

• hampir tenggelam = almost drown
• hampir jatuh = almost fall
• hampir mati = almost die

So the pattern is very straightforward:

• hampir + verb/adjective/state

Usually, yes. Hampir strongly suggests that the event came close to happening but did not fully happen.

So Dia hampir tenggelam normally means:

• the person was in danger
• the person nearly drowned
• but the person did not actually drown

Of course, real-world context can add nuance, but the normal interpretation is that the drowning did not happen.

Tenggelam basically means to sink, to go under water, or to drown, depending on context.

In this sentence, because the subject is a person, the most natural English meaning is drown:

• Dia hampir tenggelam = He/she almost drowned

But with non-human subjects, it can mean sink:

• Kapal itu tenggelam = The ship sank

So tenggelam is broader than just drown.

Because tenggelam by itself already works naturally as an intransitive verb, meaning something like sink/go under/drown.

In this sentence, the subject is the one experiencing the event:

• Dia tenggelam = He/she drowned / sank under

By contrast, menenggelamkan is causative/transitive and means to sink something or to drown someone/something:

• Mereka menenggelamkan perahu itu = They sank that boat

So:

• tenggelam = to sink/drown oneself, go under
• menenggelamkan = to cause something/someone to sink

Here, di is a preposition meaning in, at, or sometimes on, depending on context. In di sungai itu, it means in that river.

It is written separately because it is a preposition:

• di sungai
• di rumah
• di sekolah

This is different from the passive prefix di-, which is attached directly to a verb:

• ditolong = helped
• dibuka = opened

So this sentence has the preposition di, not the passive prefix di-.

In Indonesian, demonstratives like ini and itu usually come after the noun.

So:

• sungai itu = that river
• rumah itu = that house
• buku ini = this book

This is one of the most noticeable differences from English word order. English says that river, but Indonesian says river that.

It can mean either, depending on context.

Most literally:

• sungai itu = that river

But in natural translation, it can also function a lot like the river when the river is already known or identifiable in the conversation.

So in context, di sungai itu could be understood as:

• in that river
• in the river

The Indonesian form stays the same; English chooses the most natural option based on context.

The structure is:

• Dia = subject
• hampir = adverb
• tenggelam = verb
• di sungai itu = prepositional phrase showing location

So the full pattern is:

Subject + adverb + verb + location

That makes this a very typical Indonesian sentence. Indonesian word order is often quite similar to English in simple statements, except for things like noun-demonstrative order, as in sungai itu.

Yes. Nyaris and hampir both mean almost, and in this sentence they are very close in meaning:

• Dia hampir tenggelam di sungai itu.
• Dia nyaris tenggelam di sungai itu.

Both are natural. Depending on speaker and context, nyaris can sound a little more dramatic or a little more formal/literary, but the difference is small. For most learners, they are near-equivalents in sentences like this.