Learn Hardcore Indonesian: Kami memotret keluarga besar di ruang tamu. - We take photos of the extended family in the living room.

If the speaker wanted to include the listener (e.g. “You and I are taking pictures of the extended family”), they would say Kita memotret keluarga besar di ruang tamu.

How do we know the tense in this sentence? Could it mean past, present, or future?

Indonesian verbs don’t change form for tense, so memotret itself is tenseless. Kami memotret keluarga besar di ruang tamu can mean:

We took pictures of the extended family in the living room. (past)
We are taking pictures of the extended family in the living room. (present)
We will take pictures of the extended family in the living room. (future – less common without extra markers)

Context or time words clarify the tense, for example:

Tadi kami memotret keluarga besar di ruang tamu.
→ We took pictures … earlier.
Sekarang kami memotret keluarga besar di ruang tamu.
→ We are taking pictures … now.
Nanti kami akan memotret keluarga besar di ruang tamu.
→ We will take pictures … later.

What does memotret mean exactly, and how is it different from mengambil foto or berfoto?

All three are related to taking photos, but with slightly different nuances:

memotret
- Literally “to photograph”.
- Focuses on the act of taking a picture with a camera/phone.
- Usually transitive: needs an object.
  - Kami memotret keluarga besar. → We photographed the extended family.
mengambil foto
- Literally “to take a photo”.
- Very common, slightly more general.
- Also transitive:
  - Kami mengambil foto keluarga besar.
berfoto
- Literally “to ‘photo’ (take photos / pose for photos)”.
- Usually intransitive (no direct object).
  - Kami berfoto di ruang tamu. → We took photos / posed in the living room.

So your sentence could also be:

Kami mengambil foto keluarga besar di ruang tamu.
Kami berfoto bersama keluarga besar di ruang tamu. (We took photos together with the extended family in the living room.)

Does keluarga besar mean “big family” (many people) or “physically large family members”?

Keluarga besar almost always means extended family, i.e.:

parents, children, plus grandparents, uncles, aunts, cousins, etc.

It’s about the scope of the family, not body size.

If you wanted to say that the family members are physically large, you’d typically use adjectives about the people, not keluarga besar:

Keluarga kami semua bertubuh besar. → Our family are all big-bodied.
Mereka orang-orang yang besar. → They are big people. (context needed)

If I want to say our extended family, where do I put kami?

You add the possessive pronoun kami after the noun:

keluarga besar kami = our extended family

So a more explicit sentence would be:

Kami memotret keluarga besar kami di ruang tamu.
→ We photographed our extended family in the living room.

Without kami after keluarga besar, it could mean:

“the extended family” in general, or
a specific extended family already known from context (maybe “our” family, maybe not).

Why is di ruang tamu at the end? Can it go somewhere else in the sentence?

The neutral, most common word order in Indonesian is:

Subject – Verb – Object – (Place / Time / Other details)

So:

Kami (S) memotret (V) keluarga besar (O) di ruang tamu (place).

You can move di ruang tamu for emphasis or style:

Di ruang tamu, kami memotret keluarga besar.
→ In the living room, we photographed the extended family. (Emphasis on the location.)

But putting it in the middle, like:

Kami di ruang tamu memotret keluarga besar.

is also possible, but sounds more marked and slightly less neutral; it may emphasize that we (who are in the living room) are the ones taking the photo.

What exactly does ruang tamu mean? Is it one word or two?

Ruang tamu is a two-word noun phrase:

ruang = room, space
tamu = guest

So ruang tamu literally means guest room, but in everyday Indonesian it corresponds to living room (the room where you receive guests).

It behaves like a normal noun:

di ruang tamu → in the living room
ruang tamu rumah kami → our house’s living room
sebuah ruang tamu yang luas → a spacious living room

Can the subject kami be dropped? Can I just say Memotret keluarga besar di ruang tamu?

You can drop kami, but it changes how natural it feels, depending on context:

Memotret keluarga besar di ruang tamu.
Grammatically okay, but sounds like:
- a fragment (e.g. in a caption, title, or instruction), or
- an action description without a clear subject (“Photographing the extended family in the living room”).

For a normal full sentence in conversation or narrative, Indonesian usually includes the subject pronoun:

Kami memotret keluarga besar di ruang tamu.
Mereka memotret keluarga besar di ruang tamu.

Dropping the subject is common in imperatives and bullet-point instructions:

Memotret keluarga besar di ruang tamu. → (Instruction: “Take a photo of the extended family in the living room.”)

How would I say this in the passive voice, like “The extended family was photographed in the living room”?

In passive voice, we make the object the subject. For your sentence, a natural passive would be:

Keluarga besar difoto di ruang tamu.
→ The extended family was photographed in the living room.

Some notes:

difoto comes from foto with passive prefix di-.
You usually don’t mention the agent (by us) unless needed.
If you really want to include it:
- Keluarga besar difoto oleh kami di ruang tamu.
  → The extended family was photographed by us in the living room.

Using difoto is more common than dipotret in everyday speech, though dipotret is also grammatically valid.

Do I need sedang to say “are taking pictures” (present continuous)?

You don’t need sedang, but you can use it for clarity.

Kami memotret keluarga besar di ruang tamu.
Could be past, present, or future, depending on context.
Kami sedang memotret keluarga besar di ruang tamu.
Focuses clearly on an action in progress now:
→ We are (currently) taking pictures of the extended family in the living room.

Other aspect markers:

sedang → in the middle of doing something (progressive)
masih → still doing something
baru saja → just did something / just now

Why don’t we say memotret foto keluarga besar? Would adding foto be wrong?

Usually, adding foto after memotret is unnecessary and sounds redundant.

memotret already means to take a photo / photograph.
So:
Kami memotret keluarga besar.
literally: We photograph the extended family.
(clear: we are taking their picture.)

Memotret foto keluarga besar is understood, but feels like saying “photograph the photo of the extended family” or “take a photo photo of the extended family” to many speakers.

If you want to explicitly mention photo, use mengambil foto:

Kami mengambil foto keluarga besar di ruang tamu.
→ We took a photo of the extended family in the living room.

How do we know keluarga besar refers to many people if there is no plural marking?

Indonesian usually does not mark plural with an ending like -s in English. Instead, plurality comes from:

The meaning of the noun (e.g. keluarga naturally involves multiple people).
Context.
Optional plural markers like banyak (many), para (for people), or repetition (anak-anak).

In keluarga besar:

keluarga = family (implies a group)
besar here = extended / big in scope
So the phrase already implies many people. You don’t need an explicit plural form.

If you really wanted to emphasize “many families” (more than one family):

banyak keluarga besar → many extended families.