Learn Hardcore Indonesian: Kursi di ruang tamu ditarik ke meja sebelum makan malam. - The chair in the living room is pulled to the table before dinner.

Time words: kemarin (yesterday), tadi (earlier), besok (tomorrow), etc.
Aspect words: sudah (already), sedang (in the process of), akan (will).

So:

Kursi … ditarik ke meja sebelum makan malam.
= The chairs were pulled to the table before dinner. (past, from context)
Tadi kursi … ditarik ke meja sebelum makan malam.
= Explicitly past (earlier, the chairs were pulled…)

Why is it ditarik and not menarik? What’s the difference?

The root is tarik (pull).

menarik = active voice: to pull (something)
- Kami menarik kursi. = We pull the chair(s).
ditarik = passive voice: to be pulled
- Kursi ditarik. = The chair(s) are / were pulled.

In your sentence, kursi (the chairs) are the thing being acted on, so passive ditarik is used: > Kursi … ditarik ke meja…
> The chairs were pulled to the table…

You’d use menarik if you explicitly mention the doer as the subject: > Kami menarik kursi di ruang tamu ke meja sebelum makan malam.
> We pulled the chairs in the living room to the table before dinner.

Who is doing the pulling? Where is the subject like “we” or “they”?

In this sentence:

Kursi di ruang tamu ditarik ke meja…

Kursi di ruang tamu is the grammatical subject (the thing affected).
The doer (agent) is left unstated. Indonesian often omits it if it’s obvious or unimportant.

Possible full versions:

Kursi di ruang tamu ditarik ke meja sebelum makan malam oleh kami.
(…were pulled to the table before dinner by us.)
Kursi di ruang tamu kami tarik ke meja sebelum makan malam.
(colloquial passive with kami after the object)
Kami menarik kursi di ruang tamu ke meja sebelum makan malam.
(fully active)

In everyday Indonesian, leaving the agent out is very natural when it doesn’t really matter who did it.

Does kursi mean “chair” (singular) or “chairs” (plural) here?

By itself, kursi is number-neutral. It can mean “chair” or “chairs” depending on context. In this sentence, English speakers normally imagine:

Kursi di ruang tamu ditarik ke meja…
→ The chairs in the living room were pulled…

To make plural explicit, you can say:

kursi-kursi = chairs (general plural)
beberapa kursi = some chairs
semua kursi = all the chairs
tiga kursi = three chairs

So you could also say: > Semua kursi di ruang tamu ditarik ke meja sebelum makan malam.
> All the chairs in the living room were pulled to the table before dinner.

How do you say “the chairs in the living room”? There’s no “the” in the sentence.

Indonesian normally doesn’t use articles like “the” or “a”. Definiteness is understood from context, or shown with ini / itu.

kursi di ruang tamu
= chair/chairs in the living room (often translates as the chairs)
kursi di ruang tamu itu
= those chairs in the living room / the chairs in that living room (more specifically “those/the”)

So your sentence naturally corresponds to English “The chairs in the living room were pulled…”, even though there’s no word for “the” there.

Is di ruang tamu describing the chairs or saying where the action happens?

In this sentence, di ruang tamu attaches to kursi and describes which chairs:

Kursi di ruang tamu = the chairs (that are) in the living room

Structure:

[Kursi di ruang tamu] (subject)
ditarik (passive verb)
[ke meja] (direction phrase)
[sebelum makan malam] (time phrase)

If you wanted “The chairs were pulled to the table in the living room…”, you’d normally rephrase, e.g.:

Kursi ditarik ke meja di ruang tamu sebelum makan malam.
(Now di ruang tamu is more likely read as describing meja / location of the action.)

So word order decides whether di ruang tamu modifies kursi or the place of the action.

In sebelum makan malam, is makan malam a verb (“to eat dinner”) or a noun (“dinner”)?

Makan malam can function both as:

A verb phrase: to eat dinner
- Kami makan malam jam tujuh. = We eat dinner at seven.
A noun-like event: the evening meal / dinner
- Sesudah makan malam, kami menonton TV. = After dinner, we watch TV.

In sebelum makan malam:

It’s best understood as “before dinner / before the evening meal”.
English also blurs verb vs noun here (“before dinner”, “after lunch”).

If you want to show an explicit subject in the time clause:

sebelum kami makan malam = before we eat dinner
sebelum mereka makan malam = before they eat dinner

Why is it ke meja and not kepada meja or just meja?

Indonesian has two common “to” prepositions:

ke = to, toward (physical direction / destination, places & things)
- ke meja, ke rumah, ke sekolah
kepada = to (mostly for people / recipients, or formal style)
- kepada guru, kepada orang tua, kepada Tuhan

So:

ditarik ke meja = pulled to the table (correct)
kepada meja is wrong here; meja is not a person or recipient.

You can’t drop ke here; ditarik meja would sound more like “pulled the table” (with meja as an object), not “pulled to the table”.

Can this sentence describe a habit, like “The chairs are (usually) pulled to the table before dinner”?

Yes. Indonesian verb forms don’t change for tense/aspect, so:

Kursi di ruang tamu ditarik ke meja sebelum makan malam.

can mean:

A specific past event (were pulled), or
A habitual action (are usually pulled / are pulled every day),

depending on context.

To make it clearly habitual, you can add time/frequency words:

Setiap hari, kursi di ruang tamu ditarik ke meja sebelum makan malam.
Biasanya, kursi di ruang tamu ditarik ke meja sebelum makan malam.

Can I move sebelum makan malam to the beginning of the sentence?

Yes, very naturally:

Sebelum makan malam, kursi di ruang tamu ditarik ke meja.

This is common and just puts extra focus on the time frame (“Before dinner, …”). The meaning is the same. In writing, we normally add a comma after the fronted time phrase.

How would I say this in an active sentence with “we” as the subject?

You can change it to active voice:

Kami menarik kursi di ruang tamu ke meja sebelum makan malam.
We pulled the chairs in the living room to the table before dinner.

Comparison:

Passive (original):
Kursi di ruang tamu ditarik ke meja sebelum makan malam.
– Focus on the chairs as topic; doer is hidden.
Active:
Kami menarik…
– Focus on we as the actor.

There’s also a colloquial “short passive” with a pronoun after the object:

Kursi di ruang tamu kami tarik ke meja sebelum makan malam.
We pull/pulled the chairs in the living room to the table before dinner.

Here kami is still the doer, but the sentence starts with the object, like English “The chairs, we pulled (them) to the table…”

Is ruang tamu a fixed expression? What about ruangan tamu or ruang duduk?

Yes, ruang tamu is the standard, fixed phrase for “living room” / “guest sitting room” in Indonesian.

ruang tamu = normal, most common
ruangan tamu = grammatically possible but much less common; sounds more like “the guest room space” as a physical room area
ruang duduk = could be understood as “sitting room”, but is not the usual term
ruang keluarga = “family room” / lounge, slightly different function from ruang tamu

So in everyday Indonesian, you should say ruang tamu.