Questions & Answers about Dia sembuh setelah minum obat.
Why is Dia used here for “he/she”? How do I know if it’s masculine or feminine?
Dia in Indonesian is a gender-neutral third-person pronoun. It can mean “he,” “she,” or even “it,” depending on context. There is no grammatical gender on dia. You determine the person’s gender from surrounding context or by explicitly adding words like laki-laki (“male”) or perempuan (“female”), or simply by using a proper name.
How is the past tense shown in Dia sembuh setelah minum obat? There’s no “-ed” or “did.”
Indonesian verbs don’t change form for past, present, or future. Instead, time is indicated by context or by adding words like sudah (“already”) for completed actions, akan (“will”) for future, or adverbs such as kemarin (“yesterday”). Here, the sequence of events (he recovered after taking medicine) and context imply it happened in the past. If you want to be explicit, you could say Dia sudah sembuh setelah minum obat.
What part of speech is setelah, and why does it come before minum obat?
Setelah is a conjunction meaning “after.” It introduces a time clause. In this sentence, it precedes the verb phrase minum obat (“take medicine”). You can also put the time clause at the beginning: Setelah minum obat, dia sembuh, which has exactly the same meaning.
Why is minum not in the “meN-” form (like meminum) when it takes the object obat?
Many everyday verbs, included, can directly take an object without the prefix. While exists and is formally transitive, Indonesians almost always say . It’s shorter and more natural in speech.