Breakdown of Desa kami mengadakan festival kecil dengan lomba memasak dan musik.
Questions & Answers about Desa kami mengadakan festival kecil dengan lomba memasak dan musik.
In Indonesian, the possessed noun usually comes first, and the possessor follows it:
- desa kami = our village (literally village our)
- rumah saya = my house (literally house my)
Putting kami in front (kami desa) is ungrammatical. Personal pronouns used as possessors go after the noun they possess.
Both can be translated as our village, but there is a nuance:
desa
- More neutral/administrative.
- Often used in formal or written contexts, or when talking about a village as an official unit.
kampung
- More informal and emotional.
- Can mean hometown/neighborhood; feels more personal or nostalgic.
In your sentence, desa kami sounds slightly more neutral or descriptive. Kampung kami mengadakan festival kecil… would sound a bit warmer or more colloquial.
Indonesian distinguishes two kinds of we:
- kami = we / our (excluding the listener)
- kita = we / our (including the listener)
desa kami means our village but implies the village of us (not including you). So the speaker is talking to someone who is not part of the village.
If the listener is also from that village and you want to include them, you’d say:
- desa kita mengadakan festival kecil…
→ our village (yours and mine) is holding a small festival…
Mengadakan means to hold / to organize / to arrange (an event).
Morphology:
- Root: ada = to exist / there is / there are
- Prefix meng-
- root ada
- suffix -kan → mengadakan
- root ada
Literally, it’s something like to cause there to be → to hold / to set up.
So:
- desa kami mengadakan festival kecil
= our village is holding / organizing a small festival.
Other common verbs with a similar meaning in this context:
- menggelar festival (slightly more formal/journalistic)
- menyelenggarakan festival (formal, bureaucratic)
Indonesian verbs do not change form for tense. Mengadakan itself is tenseless; context tells you when the action happens.
Depending on context, desa kami mengadakan festival kecil… could mean:
- Our village held a small festival… (past)
- Our village is holding a small festival… (present)
- Our village holds a small festival… (habitual)
To make the time clearer, you add time words:
- kemarin desa kami mengadakan festival kecil
→ yesterday our village held a small festival - besok desa kami akan mengadakan festival kecil
→ tomorrow our village will hold a small festival
In Indonesian, adjectives normally come after the noun they describe:
- festival kecil = small festival
- rumah besar = big house
- baju merah = red shirt
Putting the adjective first (kecil festival) is incorrect in standard Indonesian.
Kecil primarily means small in size, amount, or scale, but it can also imply modest or not big / not grand.
In festival kecil, likely meanings are:
- A physically small festival (few people, small area), and/or
- A modest/low-key event (not a big official festival)
The nuance is similar to a small local festival or a little festival in English.
Dengan usually means with.
Here, dengan links the main event (festival kecil) with what it includes:
- festival kecil dengan lomba memasak dan musik
→ a small festival with a cooking competition and music
You can think of it as:
- a small festival, featuring a cooking competition and music
- a small festival, with…
Literally, it is ambiguous:
- lomba memasak dan musik
could be read as:- a cooking competition and a music competition
- a cooking-and-music competition (one event)
In real usage, many Indonesians would understand it as two separate things, but it’s not perfectly clear.
To make it clearly two competitions, people usually say:
- lomba memasak dan lomba musik
→ a cooking competition and a music competition
If the idea is a cooking competition plus musical performances (not a competition), you might say:
- lomba memasak dan pertunjukan musik
→ a cooking competition and musical performances
Indonesian often leaves number (singular/plural) implicit. Lomba memasak can mean:
- a cooking competition
- cooking competitions
Context usually tells you which is meant. If needed, you can specify:
- satu lomba memasak = one cooking competition
- beberapa lomba memasak = several cooking competitions
- bermacam-macam lomba memasak = various cooking competitions
The shorter lomba memasak is the most natural and general.
You can say something like that, but the meaning and grammar change:
desa kami mengadakan festival kecil
→ our village is holding / organizing a small festival
(the village, as an organizer, is doing the action)di desa kami ada festival kecil
→ in our village there is a small festival
(describes existence, not who organizes it)
You need di and ada together to sound natural:
- di desa kami ada festival kecil dengan lomba memasak dan musik
= in our village there is a small festival with a cooking competition and music.
But if you want to emphasize that the village (the community/authorities) is organizing it, mengadakan is better.
Mengadakan is neutral and very common. You can use it in:
- Everyday speech
- News reports
- Official announcements
- Writing
In very casual conversation, people might also say:
- desa kami bikin festival kecil… (bikin = to make / to do; very informal)
- desa kami ngadain festival kecil… (ngadain = colloquial, spoken form of mengadakan)
But mengadakan is perfectly fine and natural in both spoken and written Indonesian.