Breakdown of Setelah itu, dia tertawa karena lumba-lumba di film tampak sangat ramah.
Questions & Answers about Setelah itu, dia tertawa karena lumba-lumba di film tampak sangat ramah.
Setelah itu literally means after that and works as a time connector linking this sentence to the previous event in the story.
A few points:
- It does not show tense by itself; Indonesian doesn’t mark past tense the way English does. Instead, words like setelah (after), sebelum (before), tadi (earlier), kemarin (yesterday) give the time frame.
- Setelah itu at the beginning of a sentence is very natural in narratives:
- Setelah itu, dia tertawa... → After that, he/she laughed...
- You could often replace it with:
- Sesudah itu (synonym, same meaning; sesudah is slightly more formal in some regions, but both are common)
- Lalu or kemudian (more like then)
So Setelah itu is mostly a discourse connector, not a grammatical tense marker.
Dia can mean either he or she; it’s gender-neutral.
Indonesian usually doesn’t specify gender unless it’s really necessary. Context normally tells you whether dia refers to a male or a female.
Related pronouns:
- Dia – he / she (neutral, common in speech and writing)
- Ia – also he / she, a bit more formal or literary, often used for subjects in written texts:
- Ia tertawa karena...
- Beliau – respectful he/she (for older people, respected figures)
If you really need to specify gender, you might add a noun:
- Dia laki-laki itu... – that man...
- Dia perempuan itu... – that woman...
But in most everyday Indonesian, dia alone is enough.
Tertawa is already the basic verb meaning to laugh; you don’t add another prefix like ber-.
- Tertawa = to laugh
- Dia tertawa. – He/She laughs / He/She laughed.
- There’s also the informal ketawa, very common in speech:
- Dia ketawa karena lucu. – He/She laughed because it was funny.
You don’t say bertertawa; that would be ungrammatical.
In this sentence:
- dia tertawa is a complete clause: he/she laughed.
- It’s an intransitive verb; you don’t put a direct object after tertawa. You can only add reasons or manners:
- Dia tertawa karena... – He/She laughed because...
- Dia tertawa keras. – He/She laughed loudly.
Karena means because and introduces a reason clause.
In the sentence:
- dia tertawa – main clause: he/she laughed
- karena lumba-lumba di film tampak sangat ramah – reason clause: because the dolphins in the movie looked very friendly
The structure is:
[Main clause], karena [reason].
Dia tertawa, karena lumba-lumba di film tampak sangat ramah.
You can also switch the order:
Karena lumba-lumba di film tampak sangat ramah, dia tertawa.
Both are grammatical. Notes:
- When karena comes first, it’s very natural to put a comma after the reason clause.
- When karena comes in the middle, the comma is optional in everyday writing but often used for clarity.
So yes, you can put karena at the beginning; the meaning stays the same, only the emphasis can shift slightly to the cause.
Lumba-lumba is written with a hyphen because it is a reduplicated form (word repeated). In many cases, reduplication in Indonesian can indicate plurality, but with animal names like this, it usually functions as the standard singular noun.
So:
- lumba-lumba – a dolphin or dolphins, depending on context.
- Indonesian often leaves number (singular/plural) unspecified unless needed.
To be very clear:
- seekor lumba-lumba – one dolphin (using the animal classifier ekor)
- beberapa ekor lumba-lumba – several dolphins
- banyak lumba-lumba – many dolphins
In your sentence, lumba-lumba di film most naturally suggests the dolphins in the movie (plural), because films usually show more than one dolphin, but the grammar itself does not force singular or plural.
Both di film and dalam film can be translated as in the movie, but there is a nuance:
- di – at / in / on (basic preposition for location)
- dalam – in / inside (slightly more explicit about being inside something, and often a bit more formal or abstract)
In your sentence:
- lumba-lumba di film = the dolphins in the movie (the ones that appear in it)
- lumba-lumba dalam film would also be understandable and acceptable, especially in more formal or written contexts.
Nuance:
- di film is very common and sounds natural in casual conversation.
- dalam film may feel a bit more written/formal or used when treating the film as a container or context (e.g., topics, themes in a film).
For everyday speech here, di film is perfectly natural.
Tampak means to appear or to look (in the sense of seem based on appearance).
In your sentence:
- tampak sangat ramah = looked very friendly / appeared very friendly.
Similar words:
- terlihat – to be seen, to look (quite neutral and common)
- Lumba-lumba itu terlihat ramah.
- kelihatan – same meaning, slightly more colloquial
- Lumba-lumba itu kelihatan ramah.
- nampak – similar to tampak, sometimes slightly literary or regional.
You can often swap them without changing the basic meaning:
- Lumba-lumba di film tampak sangat ramah.
- Lumba-lumba di film terlihat sangat ramah.
- Lumba-lumba di film kelihatan sangat ramah.
All are acceptable. Tampak and terlihat sound a bit more neutral/standard; kelihatan often feels more informal.
Sangat is an intensifier meaning very.
In the sentence:
- tampak sangat ramah – looked very friendly.
Common intensifiers:
- sangat – very (neutral, suitable for spoken and written Indonesian)
- sangat ramah – very friendly
- sekali – very, extremely (placed after the adjective)
- ramah sekali – very friendly
- banget – very, really (informal, colloquial)
- ramah banget – really friendly
So you could also say:
- Lumba-lumba di film tampak ramah sekali. – The dolphins in the movie looked very friendly.
- Lumba-lumba di film kelihatan ramah banget. – (more colloquial)
Sangat before the adjective sounds a bit more neutral or formal than banget, and it is acceptable in almost any context.
The basic word order in the clause is:
[Subject] [Verb] [Adverb/Complement]
Lumba-lumba di film – subject phrase (the dolphins in the movie)
tampak – verb (appeared / looked)
sangat ramah – complement (very friendly)
Di film sits inside the subject phrase, specifying which dolphins.
You could say:
- Lumba-lumba tampak sangat ramah di film.
This is still grammatical, but the nuance shifts slightly:
- lumba-lumba di film tampak sangat ramah – focuses on the dolphins in the movie as a specific group.
- lumba-lumba tampak sangat ramah di film – can sound more like: “Dolphins looked very friendly in the movie” (emphasis more on in the movie as the context where they look friendly).
Both are understandable; the original is the more straightforward way to refer specifically to the dolphins that appear in the film.
In most standard Indonesian, you keep the subject dia here:
- Setelah itu, dia tertawa karena...
Dropping dia to say:
- Setelah itu, tertawa karena lumba-lumba di film tampak sangat ramah.
would sound incomplete or unnatural in standard writing, because tertawa is not an impersonal verb; someone has to be doing the laughing.
However, in very informal spoken Indonesian, people sometimes omit pronouns when context is extremely clear, but that’s more common with the first person ((saya) mau pergi → Mau pergi). With dia, you are safer and more natural keeping it in this sentence.