Breakdown of Ibu memanaskan sup wortel dan tomat di panci besar sebelum makan malam.
Questions & Answers about Ibu memanaskan sup wortel dan tomat di panci besar sebelum makan malam.
Capital Ibu in this sentence is being used like a name/title for the speaker’s own mother, so it means “Mom / Mother”.
- Ibu (capitalized, no possessive word) ≈ Mom / Mother (talking about my mother; the “my” is understood from context).
- ibu (lowercase) can mean:
- mother in general, or
- a polite title like Mrs. / Ma’am / Madam (e.g. Ibu Sari = Mrs. Sari).
Indonesian often drops “my/your/his” when the relationship is obvious. So Ibu memanaskan… is understood as “(My) mom heats…” in normal family-context speech.
The root word is panas = hot.
- me- is a verb-forming prefix.
- -kan is a suffix that often makes the verb causative (to cause something to become X).
So:
- panas = hot
- memanas = (something) becomes hot / heats up (intransitive, no direct object)
- memanaskan = to make something hot / to heat (something) (transitive, with a direct object)
In this sentence:
- memanaskan sup… = “to heat the soup”, literally “to make the soup hot.”
- memanaskan = to heat / warm (up) something (it might already be cooked; you’re just making it hot).
- memasak = to cook (the process of preparing raw or partly prepared food).
So:
- Ibu memanaskan sup… = Mom is reheating or warming up soup.
- Ibu memasak sup… = Mom is cooking soup (from raw ingredients or from scratch).
The sentence as given suggests the soup is already made and she’s just heating it up before dinner.
sup wortel dan tomat is usually understood as one soup that contains both carrots and tomatoes:
- sup wortel dan tomat ≈ carrot and tomato soup (one dish).
If you wanted to say two different soups (carrot soup and tomato soup), you’d normally phrase it more clearly, for example:
- sup wortel dan sup tomat
- dua macam sup: sup wortel dan sup tomat
(two kinds of soup: carrot soup and tomato soup)
Because wortel dan tomat both come after one noun (“sup”), they are read as ingredients/modifiers of that one soup.
di is a preposition of place = in / at / on, depending on context.
- di panci besar = in the big pot
We use di because we’re talking about location: the soup is in the pot while it’s being heated.
dengan panci besar would literally mean “with a big pot”, focusing on the tool more than the location, and sounds unnatural in this context. When we talk about food being cooked or heated inside a container, Indonesian very typically uses di:
- di wajan = in the frying pan
- di oven = in the oven
- di panci besar = in the big pot
panci is usually closer to “pot” in English:
- a deep, usually metal container with high sides, used for boiling soup, noodles, etc.
A shallow frying pan would more likely be wajan.
So panci besar is naturally translated as “a big pot”, not “a big pan.”
Indonesian does not have articles like “a/an” or “the”. Nouns are usually bare:
- sup = soup / the soup / some soup (context decides)
- panci besar = a big pot / the big pot
In this sentence, context makes it feel like:
- the carrot and tomato soup (the soup they’re going to eat),
- a/the big pot (probably the usual big pot in that household).
If you need to emphasize specificity, you can add words like:
- sup itu = that soup / the soup
- sebuah panci besar = one big pot (emphasizing “one piece”)
But in everyday speech, those are often omitted.
Literally:
- sebelum = before
- makan malam = to eat dinner / have dinner (verb phrase) or dinner (as a noun)
So sebelum makan malam ≈ “before (we) eat dinner / before dinner.”
Indonesian often omits the subject of subordinate time clauses when it’s the same as the main clause subject. Here:
- Main clause subject: Ibu
- Time clause: sebelum makan malam (who eats dinner? the family, including Ibu – understood from context)
If you wanted to be explicit, you could say:
- sebelum kami makan malam = before we eat dinner (excluding listener)
- sebelum kita makan malam = before we eat dinner (including listener)
But it’s not necessary in a simple, clear context like this sentence.
It can function as either, depending on context, and Indonesians don’t usually worry about it strictly.
- As a verb phrase: makan (to eat) + malam (night)
→ makan malam = to eat dinner / to have dinner - As a noun phrase: it is also used as the fixed expression “dinner”.
In sebelum makan malam, you can understand it as:
- before (we) have dinner, or
- before dinner
Both interpretations are acceptable and practically mean the same thing here.
Yes, you can move it, and the meaning stays essentially the same:
- Ibu memanaskan sup wortel dan tomat di panci besar sebelum makan malam.
- Sebelum makan malam, Ibu memanaskan sup wortel dan tomat di panci besar.
Both = “Before dinner, Mom heats the carrot and tomato soup in a big pot.”
Putting Sebelum makan malam at the front just emphasizes the time more. You’d usually add a comma in writing when the time phrase comes first.
Indonesian verbs like memanaskan do not change form for tense (past, present, future). Time is understood from:
- context, and/or
- time words/phrases (like sebelum makan malam, nanti, kemarin, sudah, sedang, akan, etc.)
In this sentence, sebelum makan malam tells us when it happens:
- It usually implies a routine or habitual action (something Mom normally does before dinner), or
- A specific event that happens shortly before dinner, depending on the larger context.
In English we choose a tense, like:
- Mom heats / warms up the carrot and tomato soup in a big pot before dinner. (habit)
- Mom heated / warmed up the carrot and tomato soup in a big pot before dinner. (past event)
Indonesian uses the same verb form for all of these.
Yes. In everyday speech, Indonesians often:
- Omit some details if they’re obvious from context:
- Ibu memanaskan sup sebelum makan malam. (leaving out wortel dan tomat and di panci besar)
- Use simpler synonyms:
- menghangatkan sup instead of memanaskan sup (very common for reheating food)
But the original sentence is perfectly natural and clear as standard Indonesian.