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Guru meminta kami menulis biografi singkat tentang tokoh yang kami kagumi.

Guru meminta kami menulis biografi singkat tentang tokoh yang kami kagumi.
The teacher asks us to write a short biography of a person we admire.
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Questions & Answers about Guru meminta kami menulis biografi singkat tentang tokoh yang kami kagumi.

Why is it “meminta kami menulis” and not “meminta kami untuk menulis”? Are both correct?

Both are correct, and the meaning is the same: “The teacher asked us to write …”

  • meminta kami menulis

    • Literally: asked us write
    • In Indonesian, a verb can directly follow another verb without “untuk” (to) when it functions like an infinitive.
    • This is very natural and common, especially in speech:
      • Dia menyuruh saya belajar. – He told me to study.
      • Mereka mengajak kami makan. – They invited us to eat.

  • meminta kami untuk menulis

    • Adding untuk makes it a bit more explicit and sometimes slightly more formal or careful:
      • Guru meminta kami untuk menulis … is perfectly correct and often seen in writing.

So you can safely use either:

  • Guru meminta kami menulis …
  • Guru meminta kami untuk menulis …

They are both natural and mean the same thing here.

What is the difference between “kami” and “kita”, and why is “kami” used here?

Both kami and kita mean “we / us”, but:

  • kami = we (not including the person you’re talking to) → exclusive
  • kita = we (including the person you’re talking to) → inclusive

In this sentence:

  • Guru meminta kami …
    The “we/us” are the students. The teacher is not included in the group that has to write the biography.
    Therefore, kami is correct.

If the teacher were including themselves in the task (e.g., “The teacher asked us (you, me, and them) to write …”), then kita would be used:

  • Guru meminta kita menulis biografi singkat …
What exactly does “tokoh” mean? Is it just “person”?

Tokoh is more specific than just “person.”

Typical meanings:

  • a figure / prominent person / important character, often someone notable or influential.

Examples:

  • tokoh sejarah – historical figure
  • tokoh politik – political figure
  • tokoh fiksi – fictional character
  • tokoh masyarakat – community leader / public figure

So in “tokoh yang kami kagumi”, it suggests:

  • a notable person / figure whom we admire
    (not just a random person).
What does “yang” do in “tokoh yang kami kagumi”?

Yang introduces a relative clause, similar to “who / that / which” in English.

Structure here:

  • tokoh – the noun (figure/person)
  • yang – relative pronoun marker
  • kami kagumi – clause describing tokoh

So:

  • tokoh yang kami kagumi ≈ the figure (that) we admire

Pattern:

  • noun + yang + clause

More examples:

  • buku yang saya baca – the book (that) I read
  • film yang kamu tonton – the movie (that) you watched
  • guru yang baik – the teacher who is kind (literally, “teacher who kind”)
Why is it “kagumi” and not “mengagumi” in “yang kami kagumi”? What’s the difference?

Base forms:

  • kagum – amazed / in awe
  • mengagumi – to admire (verb)
  • kagumi – a shortened/stripped form of mengagumi that is very common in patterns like this.

You could say:

  • Kami mengagumi tokoh itu. – We admire that figure.

In a “noun + yang + clause” structure, Indonesian often drops the meN- prefix and uses the bare stem (sometimes with -i or -kan if the verb has that suffix):

  • tokoh yang kami kagumi ≈ tokoh yang kami mengagumi
    But the version without meng- (kagumi) is more natural here.

Other similar patterns:

  • pekerjaan yang saya sukai (not usually “yang saya menyukai”) – the job that I like
  • film yang dia tonton (not “yang dia menonton”) – the film that he/she watches/watched

So:

  • Meaning-wise, “kagumi” here = “admire”.
  • Form-wise, it’s a very typical relative-clause style: yang + subject + (meN- dropped) verb.
Is “tokoh yang kami kagumi” active or passive? Who is the subject and who is the object?

It is active, and the roles are:

  • Subject: kami – we
  • Verb: kagumi – admire
  • Object: tokoh – the figure/person

The relative clause is:

  • (yang) kami kagumi = (that) we admire

If you wanted a passive meaning like “the figure who is admired (by us)”, you could say:

  • tokoh yang dikagumi (oleh kami) – figure who is admired (by us)

So:

  • tokoh yang kami kagumi – the figure we admire (active)
  • tokoh yang dikagumi – the figure who is admired (passive, subject unspecified or general)
Could you remove “kami” and just say “tokoh yang dikagumi”? How would the meaning change?

Yes, you can:

  • tokoh yang dikagumi – literally “a figure who is admired”

Difference in nuance:

  • tokoh yang kami kagumi – we specifically admire this figure
  • tokoh yang dikagumi – this figure is admired, but it doesn’t say by whom; it implies “admired by people (in general).”

So the original sentence focuses on our admiration:

  • tokoh yang kami kagumi – the figure that we admire.
Why is it “biografi singkat” and not “singkat biografi”?

In Indonesian, adjectives usually come after the noun they describe.

Pattern:

  • noun + adjective

So:

  • biografi singkat – short biography
  • tokoh terkenal – famous figure
  • rumah besar – big house
  • buku baru – new book

Putting the adjective before the noun (“singkat biografi”) is not correct in normal Indonesian syntax.

Why is there no word like “a” or “the” before “guru” and “biografi singkat”?

Indonesian doesn’t have articles like “a/an” or “the.”
The noun on its own is neutral, and context tells you whether it means “a” or “the”.

So:

  • Guru meminta kami …
    Could be understood as:

    • The teacher asked us … (context: we know which teacher)
    • A teacher asked us … (context: introducing some teacher)

  • biografi singkat
    Could be:

    • a short biography
    • the short biography
      depending on the context.

If you really want to specify “a/one”, you can use seorang or sebuah, but it’s not needed here:

  • Seorang guru meminta kami menulis sebuah biografi singkat …
    This sounds more like “a certain teacher asked us to write a short biography …”
What does “tentang” mean in “tentang tokoh yang kami kagumi”? Can I use “mengenai” instead?

Tentang means “about / regarding / on (the topic of)”.

So:

  • biografi singkat tentang tokoh yang kami kagumi
    = a short biography about the figure we admire

You can often replace tentang with mengenai:

  • biografi singkat mengenai tokoh yang kami kagumi

Differences:

  • tentang is very common, neutral, suitable for spoken and written Indonesian.
  • mengenai is slightly more formal or bookish, often used in writing, reports, etc.

In this sentence, tentang is perfectly natural and maybe more typical in school/classroom context.

How do we know if “meminta” here is past, present, or future? There’s no tense marker.

Indonesian verbs don’t change form for tense. Meminta on its own is tenseless; the time is understood from context or from time words.

The sentence could mean:

  • The teacher asked us (earlier)
  • The teacher is asking us (now)
  • The teacher will ask us (future), depending on context.

You can add time markers if needed:

  • Tadi guru meminta kami … – Earlier the teacher asked us …
  • Kemarin guru meminta kami … – Yesterday the teacher asked us …
  • Besok guru akan meminta kami … – Tomorrow the teacher will ask us …

So:

  • Verb form stays meminta
  • Tense is shown by time words like tadi, kemarin, besok, akan, etc.

Could we change the word order, for example:
“Guru meminta kami biografi singkat menulis tentang tokoh yang kami kagumi”?

No, that word order is not natural or grammatical.

The usual order is:

  1. Guru – subject
  2. meminta – verb
  3. kami – the group being asked
  4. menulis biografi singkat – what we are asked to do (verb phrase)
  5. tentang tokoh yang kami kagumi – extra information about the biography

So the natural order is:

  • Guru meminta kami menulis biografi singkat tentang tokoh yang kami kagumi.

If you want to highlight something, you can move phrases (not split them unnaturally), for example:

  • Guru meminta kami menulis tentang tokoh yang kami kagumi, sebuah biografi singkat.
    (a bit more formal/emphatic, but still grammatical)

But separating “menulis” from “biografi singkat” the way you wrote is not correct.