Tetangga kami di rumah sebelah sangat sopan.

Our neighbor in the house next door is very polite.

Breakdown of Tetangga kami di rumah sebelah sangat sopan.

• adalah: to be
• rumah: the house
• di: in
• sangat: very
• kami: our
• tetangga: the neighbor
• sopan: polite
• sebelah: next door

Questions & Answers about Tetangga kami di rumah sebelah sangat sopan.

What does tetangga kami literally mean, and why is the pronoun after the noun?

Tetangga kami literally means our neighbor (or our neighbors; Indonesian doesn’t mark plural here).

• tetangga = neighbor
• kami = we / us (exclusive of the listener)

In Indonesian, possessors typically come after the noun:

• rumah saya = my house
• mobil mereka = their car
• tetangga kami = our neighbor(s)

So instead of English our neighbor, Indonesian says neighbor our.

What is the difference between kami and kita, and why is kami used here?

Both mean we / us, but:

• kami = we (excluding the person you talk to)
• kita = we (including the person you talk to)

In tetangga kami, the speaker is talking about their family’s neighbor, not necessarily including the listener as part of that group. For example:

• You are visiting my house, and I say:
  
  • Tetangga kami di rumah sebelah sangat sopan.
    = Our (my family’s) neighbor next door is very polite.
    You are not part of kami.

If the neighbor were also ours in a group that includes the listener, you could say tetangga kita, but in everyday use people tend to default to kami for “our” unless they explicitly mean “ours including you” as a group identity.

Is tetangga singular or plural here? How do I say “neighbor” vs “neighbors”?

Tetangga by itself is number-neutral: it can mean neighbor or neighbors, depending on context.

• Tetangga kami di rumah sebelah sangat sopan.
  Could be understood as:
  • Our neighbor next door is very polite.
  • Our neighbors next door are very polite.

If you want to be explicit:

• One neighbor:
  
  • Satu tetangga kami di rumah sebelah sangat sopan.
• Several neighbors:
  
  • Para tetangga kami sangat sopan. (formal, “the neighbors”)
  • Tetangga-tetangga kami sangat sopan. (reduplication to show plural)

But in everyday speech, context usually makes it clear, so tetangga kami alone is common.

What does di rumah sebelah literally mean?

Literally:

• di = at / in / on (location preposition)
• rumah = house
• sebelah = side / beside / next

So di rumah sebelah literally means at the house next (to us), which corresponds to next door in English.

The whole sentence:

• Tetangga kami di rumah sebelah sangat sopan.
  = Our neighbor at the house next (to us) is very polite.
  = Our next-door neighbor is very polite.

Why do we need di before rumah sebelah? Can we just say rumah sebelah?

Di is needed here because we are expressing a location: “at the house next door.”

• di rumah sebelah = at the house next door
• Without di, rumah sebelah sounds like a noun phrase “the house next door” on its own, not a location expression.

In this sentence, di rumah sebelah is acting as a location descriptor attached to tetangga kami:

• Tetangga kami [di rumah sebelah]
  = Our neighbor [who is at / who lives in the house next door]

So di works like English in/at, and is necessary to show location.

Could I move di rumah sebelah to another place in the sentence?

Yes, but you have to be careful with meaning and naturalness.

Original (most natural):

• Tetangga kami di rumah sebelah sangat sopan.
  Our neighbor next door is very polite.

Other possibilities:

1. Tetangga kami sangat sopan di rumah sebelah.
   Grammatically possible, but sounds a bit odd. It can be understood as “Our neighbor is very polite when at the house next door,” which is not what you usually mean.

2. Di rumah sebelah, tetangga kami sangat sopan.
   Also possible, with a fronted location: “At the house next door, our neighbor is very polite.”
   It still feels more natural to keep di rumah sebelah close to tetangga kami.

Best rule: keep the location phrase right after the noun it describes:
Tetangga kami di rumah sebelah (our neighbor who lives next door).

Why is there no word for “is/are” (like adalah) in this sentence?

Indonesian usually omits a verb like “to be” when linking a subject directly to an adjective:

• Dia cantik. = She is beautiful.
• Makanan ini enak. = This food is delicious.
• Tetangga kami ... sangat sopan. = Our neighbor is very polite.

You could add adalah in some contexts, but:

• Tetangga kami di rumah sebelah adalah sangat sopan.
  sounds unnatural. Adalah is normally used before a noun phrase, not before an adjective:

• Dia adalah dokter. = She is a doctor.
• Rumah itu adalah rumah kami. = That house is our house.

So for adjective predicates like sangat sopan, just leave out “is/are.”

What is the nuance of sangat sopan compared with sopan sekali or sopan banget?

All of these mean very polite, but with different levels of formality:

• sangat sopan

  • Very polite / quite formal / neutral.
  • Good for writing, polite conversation, or careful speech.

• sopan sekali

  • Also “very polite,” a bit more conversational but still neutral.
  • Very common in spoken Indonesian and informal writing.

• sopan banget (Jakarta Indonesian / colloquial)

  • Very informal, like “super polite” / “so polite.”
  • Used among friends, in casual speech, social media, etc.

So you can say:

• Tetangga kami di rumah sebelah sangat sopan. (neutral/formal)
• Tetangga kami di rumah sebelah sopan sekali. (neutral, everyday)
• Tetangga kami di rumah sebelah sopan banget. (very casual)

Could tetangga kami di rumah sebelah be ambiguous? Does it mean “our neighbor who lives next door” or “our neighbor who is currently at the house next door”?

In normal conversation, tetangga kami di rumah sebelah is understood as:

• Our neighbor who lives in the house next door (our next-door neighbor).

Technically, di rumah sebelah is a location phrase, so grammatically it could mean:

• Our neighbor (who is) at the house next door (right now).

But in real-life usage, if nothing in the context suggests a temporary situation, people will naturally interpret it as the neighbor whose home is the one next door.

If you wanted to emphasize temporary location, you’d usually add more context, e.g.:

• Tetangga kami sedang di rumah sebelah.
  Our neighbor is at the house next door (now).

How would I say “the neighbors in the house across the street are very polite” using similar structures?

You can keep a similar pattern and change the location expression:

• Tetangga kami di rumah seberang jalan sangat sopan.

Breakdown:

• tetangga kami = our neighbor(s)
• di = at / in
• rumah seberang jalan = the house across the street
  
  • seberang = opposite / across
  • jalan = street / road
• sangat sopan = very polite

So it parallels:

• Tetangga kami di rumah sebelah sangat sopan.
• Tetangga kami di rumah seberang jalan sangat sopan.

Are there more casual or alternative ways to say “our neighbor next door is very polite”?

Yes, in everyday spoken Indonesian people might say:

• Orang sebelah rumah kami sangat sopan.

  • Literally: The person of the house next to ours is very polite.

• Tetangga sebelah rumah kami sangat sopan.

  • Our neighbor in the house next to ours is very polite.

• Tetangga sebelah sangat sopan.

  • Shorter: The neighbor next door is very polite.
    (Context usually makes it clear it’s our neighbor.)

These are more colloquial, but Tetangga kami di rumah sebelah sangat sopan is already very natural and clear.