Breakdown of Kami membahas bagaimana teknologi baru mengubah lapangan kerja di masa depan.
Questions & Answers about Kami membahas bagaimana teknologi baru mengubah lapangan kerja di masa depan.
Membahas roughly means “to discuss / to talk in depth about / to examine”. It often suggests a somewhat systematic or analytical discussion, and it sounds fairly neutral-formal (common in school, office, news language).
Comparison:
membahas sesuatu
→ to discuss something (often in a focused or analytical way)mendiskusikan sesuatu
→ literally “to discuss something”; sounds formal, often used in academic or official contexts.
Structure: mendiskusikan topik itu (“discuss that topic”)membicarakan sesuatu
→ to talk about something; can be formal or neutral; less “technical” than mendiskusikan.
Structure: membicarakan masalah ini (“talk about this problem”)
In your sentence, Kami membahas… could be replaced by:
- Kami mendiskusikan bagaimana… (more formal)
- Kami membicarakan bagaimana… (still correct, slightly different nuance)
All three would be understood; membahas is a very natural choice for this kind of topic.
Indonesian verbs do not change form for tense. Membahas by itself is tense-neutral.
Kami membahas bagaimana teknologi baru mengubah lapangan kerja di masa depan. can mean:
- We are discussing how new technology is changing/will change jobs in the future.
- We discussed how new technology will change jobs in the future.
- We discuss how new technology changes jobs in the future. (habitual)
The tense is inferred from context or from time words you add:
- Past: Tadi kami membahas… / Kemarin kami membahas…
- Present (ongoing): Sekarang kami sedang membahas…
- Habitual: Setiap minggu kami membahas…
So the Indonesian sentence itself doesn’t force a specific tense; English requires you to pick one based on context.
Bagaimana means “how”.
The structure:
- Kami membahas = We discuss / We are discussing
- bagaimana teknologi baru mengubah lapangan kerja di masa depan
= how new technology changes/will change the job field in the future
So the whole clause bagaimana teknologi baru mengubah lapangan kerja di masa depan is like a “how”-clause in English:
- We discuss how new technology will change jobs in the future.
In English, that “how”-clause is an object of “discuss”.
In Indonesian, it works the same way: membahas + bagaimana-clause.
You do not need tentang here:
- ❌ Kami membahas tentang bagaimana… (often heard, but tentang is redundant)
- ✅ Kami membahas bagaimana…
Mengubah is the verb “to change (something)”. It is tense-neutral.
Indonesian often leaves future tense implicit if the sentence already contains a future time expression, or if the future meaning is obvious from context. Here we have di masa depan (“in the future”), so akan is optional:
- Mengubah (with context “future”)
→ will change / is going to change / will be changing
If you want to make the future idea very explicit, you can add akan:
- … teknologi baru akan mengubah lapangan kerja di masa depan.
Literally: “new technology will change jobs in the future.”
Both with and without akan are grammatically correct. Without akan sounds very natural.
The standard / correct form in formal Indonesian is mengubah.
- Root word: ubah (to change)
- Prefix: me-
- ubah → mengubah (to change something)
Merubah comes from treating rubah as the root, but:
- rubah (as a noun) actually means “fox” (a loanword), not “change”.
- As a verb form, merubah is very widespread in informal speech and writing, but it is considered nonstandard or a common mistake in formal Indonesian.
For learners, it’s best to stick with:
- ubah / mengubah = to change
and avoid merubah in writing tests, essays, or anything formal.
Lapangan kerja literally means “field of work”, but idiomatically it means:
- employment opportunities
- the job market
- the world of work / employment sector
So in context, the sentence is more like:
- “how new technology will change the job market / employment in the future”
If you say pekerjaan:
- pekerjaan = job (countable), work, or occupation, depending on context.
Compare:
Teknologi baru mengubah lapangan kerja.
→ New technology changes the job market / employment landscape.Teknologi baru mengubah pekerjaan saya.
→ New technology changes my job.
So lapangan kerja is more collective/system-level: the employment field, not one specific job.
Indonesian distinguishes two kinds of “we”:
- kami = we ( not including the person you’re talking to → exclusive we)
- kita = we ( including the person you’re talking to → inclusive we)
By saying Kami membahas…, the speaker implies:
- “We (some group I’m part of, but not you, listener) discussed …”
If the speaker wants to include the listener in that “we”, they’d say:
- Kita membahas bagaimana teknologi baru mengubah lapangan kerja di masa depan.
→ “We (you and I, or all of us here) are discussing …”
English “we” doesn’t show this difference, so you have to choose kami or kita based on who is included.
Di masa depan is a very common and natural way to say “in the future”.
- di = “in/at/on” (location or time, in many phrases)
- masa depan = the future
Alternatives:
pada masa depan
Grammatically possible, sounds more formal/bookish and is less common in everyday speech.masa depan (without di)
Sometimes used by itself, especially as a noun phrase:
Masa depan kita tidak pasti. (“Our future is uncertain.”)
But when used as a time expression (“in the future”), di masa depan is more idiomatic.
Other common expressions:
- ke depan (literally “ahead”) – often used as “going forward / in the future” in e.g. business talk.
Tantangan ke depan akan semakin besar.
For your sentence, di masa depan is the most natural choice.
You could say:
- Kami membahas bagaimana teknologi baru akan mengubah lapangan kerja ke depan.
- Kami membahas bagaimana, di masa depan, teknologi baru mengubah lapangan kerja.
But the original word order:
- Kami membahas bagaimana teknologi baru mengubah lapangan kerja di masa depan.
is smoother and more neutral.
Putting di masa depan in the middle (… membahas di masa depan bagaimana …) is grammatically understandable but sounds awkward and unnatural. In Indonesian, time expressions like di masa depan usually go:
- at the beginning: Di masa depan, teknologi baru akan…
- or at the end: … mengubah lapangan kerja di masa depan.
So it’s best to keep it either at the start or the end of the clause.
Yes, Indonesian often drops the subject when it’s clear from context.
- Membahas bagaimana teknologi baru mengubah lapangan kerja di masa depan.
This could mean:
“(We are) discussing how new technology will change jobs in the future,”
but it could also be understood as:“(Someone is) discussing…” / “(This section) discusses…”
Without kami, the sentence is more impersonal, like a note on a slide, a heading, or a bullet point. In full, normal prose, including kami makes it clearer who “we” is:
- Kami membahas… = We discuss / We are discussing …
The original sentence is neutral to slightly formal. It could easily appear in:
- a school essay
- an office meeting summary
- a news article
A more casual / spoken version might use simpler or more colloquial verbs:
- Kita lagi ngomongin gimana teknologi baru bakal ngubah dunia kerja ke depan.
Changes here:
- kita instead of kami (inclusive “we”; common in casual talk)
- lagi (~“currently”) marking the ongoing action
- ngomongin from ngomong (talk)
- -in, very informal “talk about”
- gimana (informal of bagaimana)
- bakal (informal future marker instead of akan)
- ngubah (informal of mengubah)
- dunia kerja (literally “the world of work”, a bit more colloquial than lapangan kerja)
So your original sentence is good for neutral or semi-formal contexts.