Di salon kecil dekat masjid, seorang perempuan merapikan rambut dan rias wajah pengantin.

In a small salon near the mosque, a woman fixes the bride’s hair and makeup.

Breakdown of Di salon kecil dekat masjid, seorang perempuan merapikan rambut dan rias wajah pengantin.

• di: in
• dan: and
• dekat: near
• kecil: small
• seorang: a
• salon: the salon
• masjid: the mosque
• perempuan: the woman
• merapikan: to fix
• rambut: the hair
• rias wajah: the makeup
• pengantin: the bride

Questions & Answers about Di salon kecil dekat masjid, seorang perempuan merapikan rambut dan rias wajah pengantin.

What does di mean in di salon kecil dekat masjid, and is it closer to in or at?

Di is a basic preposition meaning “in/at/on (a place)”.
In di salon kecil dekat masjid, it can be translated as either:

• “in a small salon near the mosque”, or
• “at a small salon near the mosque”

Indonesian di doesn’t sharply distinguish between in and at the way English does; the context decides which English preposition sounds more natural.

Why is the location phrase Di salon kecil dekat masjid put at the beginning and separated by a comma?

Putting the location phrase at the start is a common way to set the scene or background:

• Di salon kecil dekat masjid, = “In a small salon near the mosque,”

It’s like saying: “As for the location, it’s in a small salon near the mosque; there, a woman is doing XYZ.”
Grammatically, you could also say:

• Seorang perempuan merapikan rambut dan rias wajah pengantin di salon kecil dekat masjid.

Both are correct; fronting the place just emphasizes the setting more.

Why is it salon kecil and not kecil salon?

In Indonesian, descriptive adjectives normally come after the noun:

• salon kecil = “small salon”
• kota besar = “big city”
• buku baru = “new book”

Putting kecil before salon (kecil salon) would be ungrammatical in standard Indonesian.
So the order noun + adjective is the regular, default pattern.

What exactly is dekat doing in salon kecil dekat masjid, and what’s the difference between dekat masjid and di dekat masjid?

Here, dekat means “near / close to”:

• salon kecil dekat masjid ≈ “a small salon near the mosque”

About dekat masjid vs di dekat masjid:

• dekat masjid

  • Often works like an adjective: salon kecil (yang) dekat masjid = “a small salon that is near the mosque.”
  • The di is omitted because dekat masjid is directly modifying salon.

• di dekat masjid

  • More clearly a prepositional phrase: di dekat masjid = “(located) near the mosque.”
  • You might say: Dia tinggal di dekat masjid. = “He/She lives near the mosque.”

In this sentence, dekat masjid is functioning as a descriptor of the salon, so di is naturally omitted.

Could you add yang in salon kecil dekat masjid? For example, salon kecil yang dekat masjid?

Yes, you can say:

• salon kecil yang dekat masjid = “the small salon that is near the mosque”

Here yang explicitly marks a relative clause (yang dekat masjid).
Without yang, dekat masjid is still understood as describing salon kecil, and the sentence is natural and common:

• di salon kecil dekat masjid (more compact, everyday)
• di salon kecil yang dekat masjid (slightly more explicit / careful)

Both are grammatical; the original just omits yang because it’s not strictly needed.

What is the function of seorang in seorang perempuan, and how is it different from just perempuan?

Seorang literally means “one person”, but in practice it often works like an indefinite article (“a” / “one”) for people:

• seorang perempuan = “a woman / one woman”
• seorang guru = “a teacher / one teacher”

Differences:

• seorang perempuan

  • Emphasizes one specific, but unidentified, individual.
  • Naturally translates as “a woman” here.

• perempuan (without seorang)

  • Can sound more generic (“women / woman in general”) or like a role/category, depending on context.
  • In this exact sentence, Perempuan merapikan rambut… would sound odd; you normally mark a specific but unknown individual with seorang.

So seorang is used to show that we’re talking about one unspecified person, like English “a woman”.

What’s the difference between perempuan and wanita here? Could we say seorang wanita instead?

Both perempuan and wanita mean “woman”, and you can say:

• seorang perempuan
• seorang wanita

Both are acceptable.

Nuances (very general):

• perempuan

  • Neutral, very common in everyday speech.
  • Feels slightly more informal / everyday to some speakers, but still fine in many formal contexts.

• wanita

  • Common in formal or polite expressions: wanita karier (career woman), hak-hak wanita (women’s rights), Pemberdayaan Wanita (Women’s Empowerment).
  • Often used in official or media language.

In this sentence, seorang perempuan and seorang wanita would both be understood the same way.

If I wanted to say “the woman” instead of “a woman”, how would I change seorang perempuan?

Indonesian doesn’t have a fixed word like the, but it typically marks definiteness with itu (“that / the”). You could say:

• perempuan itu = “that woman / the woman”
• seorang perempuan itu is possible but less common and more marked; perempuan itu is more natural.

So a sentence with “the woman” might be:

• Di salon kecil dekat masjid, perempuan itu merapikan rambut dan rias wajah pengantin.
  = “In the small salon near the mosque, the woman is tidying the bride’s hair and makeup.”

What does merapikan mean exactly, and how is it formed?

Merapikan means roughly “to tidy / to neaten / to make something look neat”.

Morphologically:

• Root: rapi = “neat, tidy”
• Verb: merapikan = me- + rapi + -kan

The pattern is: adjective rapi → causative verb merapikan (“to make [something] neat”).
So in the sentence:

• merapikan rambut dan rias wajah pengantin
  = “making the bride’s hair and makeup neat / tidying up the bride’s hair and makeup.”

Does merapikan indicate a specific tense here, like “is tidying” (present continuous), or could it also mean “tidied” / “tidies”?

Merapikan itself does not show tense. Indonesian verbs generally don’t change form for tense.
This sentence could be interpreted as:

• “A woman is tidying the bride’s hair and makeup” (present / ongoing)
• “A woman tidies the bride’s hair and makeup” (habitual)
• “A woman tidied the bride’s hair and makeup” (past)

The exact tense comes from context or additional time words, for example:

• tadi (earlier, just now)
• sekarang (now)
• sedang (currently / in the middle of)

E.g.: Sekarang, seorang perempuan sedang merapikan rambut dan rias wajah pengantin.

How should I understand the structure rambut dan rias wajah pengantin? Does pengantin belong to both items or only to rias wajah?

The most natural parsing is that pengantin (the bride) is the possessor of both things:

• [rambut] dan [rias wajah pengantin] (possible, but less likely), vs
• [rambut dan rias wajah] pengantin (more natural reading)

In everyday understanding, speakers read it as:

• merapikan [rambut pengantin] dan [rias wajah pengantin]
  = “tidying the bride’s hair and the bride’s makeup”

Indonesian often omits the repeated noun when it’s clear, so instead of:

• rambut pengantin dan rias wajah pengantin,

you can shorten it to:

• rambut dan rias wajah pengantin,

and pengantin is understood to apply to both rambut and rias wajah.

Why is it rambut and rias wajah, not rambutnya or rias wajahnya? How do we know whose hair and makeup it is?

Possession is shown by the final pengantin:

• rambut dan rias wajah pengantin = “the bride’s hair and makeup”

If you used -nya, you’d normally say something like:

• rambutnya dan rias wajahnya = “her hair and her makeup”

In this sentence, we want to explicitly say it’s the pengantin (the bride), not just “her”. So:

• pengantin acts as a possessor noun (hair and makeup of the bride).
• -nya would be used when the owner has been previously mentioned or is obvious (e.g., rambutnya = his/her hair).

What is the difference between rias wajah, merias wajah, and riasan wajah?

All relate to makeup for the face, but:

• merias wajah

  • Verb phrase: “to apply/do makeup on someone’s face”.
  • Dia merias wajah pengantin. = “She does the bride’s makeup.”

• rias wajah

  • Noun phrase: “(the) makeup / the act of makeup / makeup styling of the face.”
  • In your sentence, it’s the thing being made neat.

• riasan wajah

  • Also a noun: literally “the result of being made up” (more “the makeup look”).
  • Slightly more formal / explicit than rias wajah, but both are used.

So merapikan … rias wajah pengantin = “tidying the bride’s makeup”, where rias wajah is treated as a noun (“the makeup”).

Does pengantin mean specifically “bride”, or can it also mean “groom”?

Literally, pengantin means “bride or groom” / “bridal couple member” – either one partner in a wedding pair.

• On its own, in a gender-neutral context, it can mean “the bride or groom”.
• In many real-life contexts, when you see rambut pengantin, rias pengantin, etc., people usually imagine the bride, because hair and makeup work focuses more on her.

Here, because it’s about rambut dan rias wajah pengantin in a salon, most readers will naturally interpret pengantin as “the bride”.

Is this sentence formal, informal, or neutral in style? Would it sound natural in everyday Indonesian?

The sentence is neutral and would sound natural in:

• Narration (stories, news features)
• Descriptive writing
• Everyday explanation

It’s not slangy or heavily colloquial, and it’s not stiffly formal either.
You could hear something like this in spoken Indonesian (especially in storytelling or description), and it fits well in written Indonesian too.