Learn Hardcore Indonesian: Kadang-kadang dia merasa cemburu ketika perasaannya campur aduk setelah membaca berita teman di media sosial. - Sometimes he/she feels jealous when his/her feelings are mixed up after reading friends’ news on social media.

kadang-kadang is the more common, neutral form in standard Indonesian.
kadang alone is also used, especially in speech, and sounds a bit more casual.

In this sentence, you could say:

Kadang dia merasa cemburu...
Kadang-kadang dia merasa cemburu...

Both are acceptable and mean the same thing. The repetition just emphasizes the idea of “from time to time / every now and then” a bit more clearly.

Where can kadang-kadang go in the sentence? Does it have to be at the beginning?

It doesn’t have to be at the beginning, but that’s a very common position. You can put it in a few places:

At the start (most natural here):
- Kadang-kadang dia merasa cemburu ketika...
After the subject:
- Dia kadang-kadang merasa cemburu ketika...
After the verb (less common here, sounds a bit marked):
- Dia merasa kadang-kadang cemburu ketika... (grammatically possible but not very natural in this specific sentence)

Positions 1 and 2 are what you’ll usually hear and read.

Does dia mean “he” or “she”? How do Indonesians know which one?

Dia can mean he, she, or even they (singular), depending on context. Indonesian pronouns are generally not marked for gender.

How people know the gender:

From earlier context in the conversation or text (e.g. someone mentioned “my sister” before).
From names, photos, or the situation being discussed.

If you really need to be explicit, you can:

Add a noun: dia (laki-laki) = he (male), dia (perempuan) = she (female)
Or replace dia with a noun phrase: perempuan itu (that woman), teman laki-laki saya (my male friend), etc.

But in normal Indonesian, people often just say dia and let context clarify.

Why do we need merasa in dia merasa cemburu? Could we just say dia cemburu?

Both are possible, with a small nuance difference.

Dia cemburu = He/She is jealous.
- Simple description of a state.
- Very common and perfectly natural.
Dia merasa cemburu = He/She feels jealous.
- Adds the idea of experiencing the emotion, more subjective or introspective.
- Slightly more formal or “psychological” in tone.

In your sentence, merasa fits well because it connects to the idea of feelings and mixed emotions (perasaannya campur aduk). But grammatically, dia cemburu ketika... also works.

Is cemburu a verb or an adjective in Indonesian?

Cemburu is typically treated like an adjective, meaning jealous.

However, Indonesian adjectives often behave like English “to be + adjective” structures, so cemburu can function almost like a verb in a sentence:

Dia cemburu. = He/She is jealous.

When you add merasa, it becomes clearly a verb phrase:

Dia merasa cemburu. = He/She feels jealous.

What does the -nya in perasaannya mean exactly? Is it “his”, “her”, or something else?

The suffix -nya on perasaannya can mean:

His / her / their (possessive pronoun)
- perasaannya = his/her feelings
- Here, it refers back to dia, so: his/her feelings are mixed up.
It can also sometimes be a definite marker (“the”), but in this sentence it’s clearly possessive.

So, perasaan = feeling(s)
perasaannya = his/her feelings (or “their feelings” for a single person, depending on context).

Why is perasaannya campur aduk not perasaannya adalah campur aduk?

In Indonesian, you usually don’t need a verb like “to be” between a noun and an adjective.

perasaannya campur aduk
- Literally: his/her feelings mixed up
- Natural Indonesian: his/her feelings are mixed up.

If you say perasaannya adalah campur aduk, it sounds odd, because adalah is mainly used between nouns or noun phrases, not between a noun and an adjective:

Natural:
- Dia adalah guru. = He/She is a teacher. (noun–noun)
Not natural:
- Dia adalah marah. ✗

So, perasaannya campur aduk is the correct structure.

What does campur aduk mean literally? Is it a fixed expression?

Literally:

campur = mixed
aduk = stirred, mixed (as a verb)

Together, campur aduk is a fixed expression meaning:

all mixed up, jumbled, in a mess (often for feelings, thoughts, situations).

Common uses:

Perasaannya campur aduk. = His/Her feelings are all mixed up.
Pikirannya campur aduk. = His/Her thoughts are jumbled.

What is the difference between ketika and setelah here? How do they work together?

They introduce different time relationships:

setelah = after
- setelah membaca berita teman di media sosial
  = after reading a friend’s news on social media
ketika = when / at the time that
- ketika perasaannya campur aduk setelah ...
  = when his/her feelings are mixed up after ...

So the structure is:

dia merasa cemburu ketika [perasaannya campur aduk setelah membaca ...]

In English-like logic:

He/She feels jealous when his/her feelings are mixed up after reading a friend’s news on social media.

You could also break it differently, but this structure is natural and clear.

Could we use saat instead of ketika? Are they the same?

Yes, in this sentence you can replace ketika with saat without changing the meaning much:

Kadang-kadang dia merasa cemburu saat perasaannya campur aduk setelah membaca berita teman di media sosial.

Both ketika and saat can mean when (in the sense of “at the time that”). Differences:

ketika: slightly more formal/neutral, common in writing and speech.
saat: also very common; sometimes feels a bit more literal “at the moment/time”.

In everyday use, they overlap a lot, and both are fine here.

How should I understand berita teman? Is it “news about friends” or “friends’ news”?

Berita teman is ambiguous in theory, but in this context it naturally means:

friends’ news / a friend’s updates on social media
(for example: posts about a new job, a new relationship, vacation photos, etc.)

Breaking it down:

berita = news
teman = friend

In Indonesian:

berita teman ≈ “the news that belongs to / is about / comes from a friend”
→ roughly: a friend’s news / updates.

If you wanted “news about friends” more explicitly, you might say berita tentang teman-teman, but for social media, berita teman is a natural way to talk about what your friends post.

Why is there no word like “of” or “’s” in berita teman? How do you show possession?

Indonesian usually shows possession by just putting the nouns together, with the “owner” after the thing:

berita teman = a friend’s news (news of a friend)
rumah adik = younger sibling’s house
mobil ayah = father’s car

So:
[thing] + [owner] → thing of owner / owner’s thing

You don’t need a word like “of” or “’s” in between. The order already expresses the relationship.

Why is the preposition di used in di media sosial? Could we use pada instead?

Di is the standard preposition for location: in / at / on (depending on context).

di media sosial = on social media
(literally “at/in social media”)

You could say pada media sosial but:

It sounds more formal and less natural in casual or semi-formal contexts.
For everyday language, di media sosial is what people use.

So:

di
- place/location: di rumah, di kantor, di internet, di media sosial.

There’s no past tense marker in setelah membaca berita teman.... How do we know it’s in the past?

Indonesian verbs do not change form for tense (past/present/future). Instead, tense is understood from:

Time words: kemarin (yesterday), besok (tomorrow), etc.
Context: the whole situation.

In setelah membaca berita teman di media sosial:

setelah = after already signals a sequence in time: action A happens, then action B.

So even though membaca is not marked as past, we interpret it as after (having) read a friend’s news because setelah clearly indicates that the reading happened before the feeling.

Could the word order be changed, for example starting with Setelah membaca berita teman...?

Yes. Indonesian word order is fairly flexible. You can front the setelah-clause:

Setelah membaca berita teman di media sosial, kadang-kadang dia merasa cemburu ketika perasaannya campur aduk.

This is still natural. The main points:

Time clauses introduced by setelah, ketika, saat, etc., can appear at the beginning or end of the sentence.
When you move a clause to the front, you usually add a comma , in writing.

Both versions are correct; the original one just starts with Kadang-kadang to emphasize the “sometimes” aspect.