Breakdown of Fakultas tempat kakak saya belajar punya perpustakaan digital yang besar.
Questions & Answers about Fakultas tempat kakak saya belajar punya perpustakaan digital yang besar.
The structure is:
- Fakultas – the faculty
- tempat – place
- kakak saya – my older sibling
- belajar – studies / is studying
Literally: “The faculty, the place my older sibling studies” → “The faculty where my older sibling studies”.
In Indonesian, a common way to say “where … (verb) …” is:
noun + tempat + [subject] + [verb]
Fakultas tempat kakak saya belajar
= the faculty where my older sibling studies
You could also say:
- Fakultas di mana kakak saya belajar – more explicitly “the faculty where my older sibling studies”
But “Fakultas tempat kakak saya belajar” is very natural and common. Here “tempat” (place) plays the role of “where” in English, but literally it is a noun (“place”), not a conjunction or relative pronoun.
Indonesian usually doesn’t need a separate word like English “that/which/where” to introduce a relative clause.
Instead, there are a few typical patterns:
- Noun + yang + [clause]
- Fakultas yang kakak saya pilih – the faculty that my older sibling chose
- Noun + tempat + [subject] + [verb]
- Fakultas tempat kakak saya belajar – the faculty where my older sibling studies
So the relative idea is already expressed by “tempat + clause”, and Indonesian doesn’t add another extra word like “that” or “which”. The whole phrase “tempat kakak saya belajar” functions as “where my older sibling studies”.
No, that sounds wrong or at least very confusing.
In Indonesian, a relative clause describing a noun has to come right after the noun it modifies. Here the clause “tempat kakak saya belajar” modifies “fakultas”, so it must follow “fakultas” directly:
- ✅ Fakultas tempat kakak saya belajar …
- ❌ Fakultas … punya perpustakaan digital yang besar tempat kakak saya belajar
In your incorrect version, “tempat kakak saya belajar” seems to modify “perpustakaan digital yang besar”, which doesn’t make sense (“the big digital library where my older sibling studies”?). So the original order is important.
Kakak means older sibling, without specifying gender:
- kakak – older sibling (could be older brother or older sister)
- adik – younger sibling (could be younger brother or younger sister)
If you really need to show gender, you can say:
- kakak laki-laki – older brother
- kakak perempuan – older sister
In many everyday situations, Indonesians don’t bother to specify gender; context usually makes it clear.
So kakak saya is best translated as “my older sibling”, but in natural English you might choose “my older brother” or “my older sister” depending on the context.
Possession with nouns usually works like this:
[possessed noun] + [possessor pronoun]
So:
- kakak saya – my older sibling
- rumah saya – my house
- buku saya – my book
Putting “saya” before the noun (like “saya kakak”) is ungrammatical here and would not mean “my older sibling”.
Other common variants for “my older sibling”:
- kakak saya – neutral, standard
- kakakku – more informal, with the suffix -ku meaning “my”
- kakak gue / kakak gua – very informal, Jakarta-style speech (gue = I/me)
In the sentence, “kakak saya” fits a neutral, standard style.
Yes, that is possible, but it becomes more context‑dependent.
- kakak alone can mean:
- “older sibling” (when talking about family), or
- a polite way to address someone slightly older than you (like “older sister/brother” as a form of address).
So:
- Fakultas tempat kakak belajar …
– If you’re already talking about your older sibling, listeners will likely understand it as “the faculty where my older sibling studies”.
– But without context, it might also sound like you’re politely addressing someone: “the faculty where you (older-bro/sis) study”.
“kakak saya” makes the ownership explicit and removes that ambiguity.
Both can be used, but they are slightly different:
- belajar – to study / to learn (general verb, any level: school, self-study, etc.)
- kuliah – to attend lectures / to study at university (college/university context)
In context of a university fakultas:
- kakak saya belajar di fakultas X – my older sibling studies at faculty X
- kakak saya kuliah di fakultas X – my older sibling goes to university at faculty X / is enrolled there
In your sentence, “tempat kakak saya belajar” is perfectly natural; Indonesians use belajar widely, including for university study. You could say:
- Fakultas tempat kakak saya kuliah punya perpustakaan digital yang besar.
This sounds a bit more specifically “university-ish”, but both versions are acceptable.
punya is the everyday, very common verb for “to have”:
- Saya punya buku. – I have a book.
- Fakultas itu punya perpustakaan digital. – That faculty has a digital library.
It’s acceptable in many written contexts, but in more formal writing you might see:
- mempunyai or memiliki – more formal synonyms of “to have”
Examples:
- Fakultas tempat kakak saya belajar mempunyai perpustakaan digital yang besar.
- Fakultas tempat kakak saya belajar memiliki perpustakaan digital yang besar.
You can also avoid “have” entirely and use ada:
- Di fakultas tempat kakak saya belajar ada perpustakaan digital yang besar.
– At the faculty where my older sibling studies, there is a large digital library.
So:
- punya – natural, neutral‑informal
- mempunyai / memiliki – more formal
- ada – “there is/are” construction
Yes, “perpustakaan digital” is a single noun phrase:
- perpustakaan – library
- digital – digital
Together: a digital library / digital library.
Indonesian does not require an article like “a” or “the”. A classifier like “sebuah” can be added, but it’s optional and often omitted when the context is clear.
So both are grammatically fine:
- Fakultas … punya perpustakaan digital yang besar.
- Fakultas … punya sebuah perpustakaan digital yang besar.
The version without “sebuah” is very common and sounds natural.
yang is a very flexible word that introduces a clause or phrase describing a noun. Here it links the noun to an adjective:
- perpustakaan digital yang besar
– literally: “the digital library which is big”.
You can say:
- perpustakaan digital besar – big digital library
In many sentences, both forms are possible:
- perpustakaan digital besar – slightly more compact
- perpustakaan digital yang besar – often feels a bit more specific/emphatic or descriptive, like “a digital library that is (notably) big”.
If you add something after the adjective or make a longer description, yang becomes more necessary:
- perpustakaan digital yang besar sekali – a very big digital library
- perpustakaan digital yang besar dan modern – a big and modern digital library
In your sentence, “yang besar” is natural and slightly emphasizes the size as a characteristic.
Yes:
- perpustakaan digital yang besar – a big digital library (no explicit definiteness)
- perpustakaan digital yang besar itu – that big digital library / the big digital library (more specific/definite)
Adding “itu” tends to:
- Point to a specific, known library (for you and the listener), or
- Give a feeling of “that one in particular”.
In the original sentence, we’re stating a general fact about the faculty, so leaving “itu” out is perfectly natural. You’d use “itu” if you were contrasting with another library or referring to one already introduced in the conversation.
These are different levels within an academic institution:
- universitas – university (the whole institution)
- fakultas – faculty (a big division within a university, e.g. Faculty of Engineering)
- jurusan – department/major (a smaller unit or specific program, e.g. Mechanical Engineering)
So, structure‑wise:
universitas
└── fakultas (e.g. Faculty of Science)
└── jurusan (e.g. Physics Department)
The sentence talks about “Fakultas tempat kakak saya belajar”, so it’s focusing on the faculty as the unit that owns the big digital library. That’s natural in contexts where each faculty has its own facilities separate from other faculties in the same university.