Learn Hardcore Indonesian: Sumur tua di belakang rumah kami pernah kering saat musim kemarau. - The old well behind our house once dried up during the dry season.

Putting tua before sumur (tua sumur) is not correct in standard Indonesian. It would sound very strange, like saying “old well” in English but with the words reversed (“old well” → “old well” is fine, but “old well” → “old well” – there’s no reversal in English; in Indonesian there is).

So:

sumur tua = correct
tua sumur = wrong for “old well”

What is the difference between sumur tua and sumur yang tua?

Both can mean “old well”, but the nuance is different:

sumur tua: a simple noun + adjective phrase. Just describes the well as old.
sumur yang tua: literally “the well that is old”.
Using yang makes it sound more like you are distinguishing this well from other wells.

For example, if there are several wells:

Ambil air dari sumur yang tua, bukan yang baru.
Take water from the well that is old, not the new one.

In your sentence, sumur tua di belakang rumah kami is perfectly natural and neutral. Sumur yang tua di belakang rumah kami is grammatically okay, but sounds more like you’re specifying which sumur among several candidates.

How does possession work in rumah kami? Why isn’t it kami rumah?

In Indonesian, possessive pronouns come after the noun:

rumah kami = our house
rumah saya = my house
rumah mereka = their house

So the pattern is: Noun + Possessive pronoun.

Putting the pronoun first (kami rumah) does not mean “our house” and is ungrammatical in this sense. You should always say:

rumah kami (our house)
mobil saya (my car)
kucingnya (his/her/their cat, depending on context)

What is the difference between kami and kita in rumah kami?

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

kami = “we (not including you, the listener)” — exclusive
kita = “we (including you, the listener)” — inclusive

So:

rumah kami = our house (the speaker’s group, not including the listener)
rumah kita = our house (including the listener as one of the owners / residents)

In your sentence:

Sumur tua di belakang rumah kami...

This suggests the house belongs to the speaker and their group, but not to the person being spoken to.

What exactly does pernah mean here, and how is it different from sudah?

Pernah is used to say that something has ever happened at least once in the past. It focuses on experience or the fact that it has happened on some occasion.

In your sentence:

...pernah kering...
...has been dry / once dried up...

It implies: At some time in the past, the well (at least once) became dry.

Compare:

pernah = have ever / once
- Saya pernah ke Jepang.
  I’ve been to Japan (at least once).
sudah = already / have (completed)
- Sumur itu sudah kering.
  The well is already dry / has already dried (and is dry now).

So pernah kering talks about a past experience (maybe it’s not dry now), while sudah kering often implies the current state is now dry.

There’s no word for “was” or a past tense ending. How is past time shown in this sentence?

Indonesian verbs do not change form for past, present, or future. Instead, past time is shown by:

Time words (yesterday, last year, etc.):
- kemarin (yesterday)
- tadi (earlier today)
- tahun lalu (last year)
Aspect words such as:
- pernah (ever, once)
- sudah (already)
- dulu (formerly, in the past)

In your sentence, past time is indicated by pernah:

pernah kering ≈ was once dry / has been dry (before)

So even though there’s no special past tense form of kering, native speakers understand it as past because of pernah (and the context).

Is kering an adjective (“dry”) or a verb (“to dry up”) here? Could I say pernah menjadi kering?

In Indonesian, many words function as both adjective-like and verb-like without changing form. Kering is one of them.

Here:

pernah kering

can be understood as:

has been dry (state/adjective), or
has dried up / became dry (change of state/verb-like),

depending on context. Both senses are natural in this sentence.

You could say:

Sumur tua di belakang rumah kami pernah menjadi kering saat musim kemarau.

This is grammatical and means roughly “...once became dry...”.
However, pernah kering is shorter and very natural; menjadi is not necessary unless you specifically want to emphasize the becoming part.

What does saat mean here, and how is it different from ketika or waktu?

In this sentence:

saat musim kemarau

saat means “when” / “at the time of” / “during”. It is followed by a noun phrase: musim kemarau (the dry season).

Rough equivalents:

saat = when / at the time (quite neutral)
ketika = when (often used before a clause with a verb, e.g. ketika saya kecil – when I was little)
waktu = when / at the time (more colloquial and very common)

In your sentence, you could also say:

pada musim kemarau (during the dry season)
di musim kemarau (in the dry season)
waktu musim kemarau (when it’s the dry season, more informal)

All of these are acceptable, with small differences in style and nuance.

Do we need the preposition di in di belakang rumah kami? Could we just say belakang rumah kami?

belakang by itself is a noun, meaning “the back” (rear).
di belakang is a prepositional phrase, meaning “at the back / behind”.

In your sentence:

di belakang rumah kami = behind our house / at the back of our house

You do normally need di to express location: di belakang rumah kami.

You can say belakang rumah kami, but then it functions as a noun phrase meaning “the area behind our house / the back of our house”, often used as a subject or object, for example:

Belakang rumah kami sangat sepi.
The area behind our house is very quiet.

But when you are saying “the old well *behind our house”, *di belakang rumah kami is the natural form.

Why isn’t there a yang in sumur tua di belakang rumah kami? Could it be sumur tua yang di belakang rumah kami?

Yang is used to introduce relative clauses or to link a noun with a descriptive phrase.

sumur tua di belakang rumah kami
= the old well behind our house (simple noun phrase: “old well” + location)

If you say:

sumur tua yang di belakang rumah kami

this literally means “the old well that is behind our house”. It’s still correct and grammatical, but:

It sounds more like you are choosing / specifying which old well: the one that is behind our house (as opposed to another old well somewhere else).
In natural conversation, yang is often omitted when the phrase is short and clear, as in your original sentence.

So your version without yang is perfectly natural and more neutral.

How do we know it’s “the old well” and not “an old well”? There’s no “the” in Indonesian.

Indonesian generally doesn’t use articles like “a/an” or “the”. Definiteness (specific vs non-specific) is usually understood from context.

In your sentence:

Sumur tua di belakang rumah kami...

It almost certainly refers to a specific well that both speaker and listener know about: “the old well behind our house”.

If you want to make the “the/that” feeling stronger, you can add itu after the noun phrase:

Sumur tua di belakang rumah kami itu pernah kering...
≈ That old well behind our house once dried up... / The old well (that you know) behind our house once dried up...

Without itu, English usually translates it as “the” here, based on context.

Can the word order of the sentence be changed, for example putting the time at the beginning?

Yes. Indonesian word order is quite flexible, especially with time and place phrases. You can move saat musim kemarau to the front for emphasis:

Saat musim kemarau, sumur tua di belakang rumah kami pernah kering.
During the dry season, the old well behind our house once dried up.

You can also front the place phrase:

Di belakang rumah kami, sumur tua itu pernah kering saat musim kemarau.
Behind our house, the old well once dried up during the dry season.

The basic information doesn’t change; you just shift what you emphasize (time, place, or subject). The original order is very natural and neutral.