Learn Hardcore Indonesian: Kami capai tujuan rapat hari ini.

kami = we (excluding the listener)
- The people you are talking about are in the group, but the person you’re speaking to is not included.
kita = we (including the listener)
- The speaker and the listener are part of the same group.

So:

Kami capai tujuan rapat hari ini.
→ We (but not you) achieved the goals of the meeting today.

If the speaker wants to include the listener as part of the group that achieved the goals, they would say:

Kita mencapai tujuan rapat hari ini.
→ We (including you) achieved the goals of the meeting today.

Is capai correct here, or should it be mencapai?

In standard Indonesian, the usual verb form is mencapai:

Kami mencapai tujuan rapat hari ini.
→ This is the most natural, neutral way to say it.

Using bare capai as a verb (without the meN- prefix) is possible in:

headlines: “Pemerintah capai kesepakatan baru.”
notes / short messages
some casual speech

But for learners, it’s safer and more natural to use:

mencapai = to reach / to achieve

So the “fully standard” version would be:

Kami mencapai tujuan rapat hari ini.

Does capai also mean “tired”? Could this sentence be misunderstood?

Yes, capai can also mean “tired”, especially in older or more formal usage (today you much more often hear capek / capek).

Saya capai. = I’m tired.

However, when capai is followed by an object like tujuan rapat, it’s clearly the verb “to reach/achieve”, not the adjective “tired”:

Kami capai tujuan rapat hari ini.
→ The structure is Subject (kami) + Verb (capai) + Object (tujuan rapat),
so “capai” = reach/achieve, not “tired”.

If you said:

Kami capai hari ini.
– this could sound odd / ambiguous.

Using mencapai completely removes the ambiguity:

Kami mencapai tujuan rapat hari ini.

How do tujuan and tujuan rapat work? Why no word for “of”?

Indonesian usually shows “of” relationships just by putting two nouns together:

tujuan = goal / purpose / objective
rapat = meeting

Put together:

tujuan rapat
literally: meeting goal
meaning: the goals of the meeting / the meeting’s objectives

There is no separate word like English of here; Noun 1 + Noun 2 usually means “Noun 1 of Noun 2” or “Noun 1 related to Noun 2”.

More examples:

pintu rumah = door of the house / the house’s door
meja kantor = office desk / desk of the office

Does tujuan rapat mean “the goal of the meeting” or “the goals of the meeting”? Where is the plural?

Indonesian doesn’t have to mark plural the way English does. Tujuan rapat can mean:

the goal of the meeting
the goals of the meeting

The context clarifies how many goals there are.

If you really want to stress plurality, you can say:

tujuan-tujuan rapat = goals (plural) of the meeting
or add a number / quantifier: beberapa tujuan rapat (several goals), semua tujuan rapat (all the goals), etc.

But in everyday speech, tujuan rapat by itself is usually enough.

What exactly does hari ini modify? Is it “today’s meeting goals” or “we achieved them today”?

In the sentence:

Kami capai tujuan rapat hari ini.

hari ini (“today”) is attached to the whole event and is most naturally read as:

We achieved the goals of the meeting today.

There’s a mild ambiguity: it could also be interpreted as “the goals of today’s meeting”, but context usually decides.

If you want to be more precise, you can use word order:

Emphasize when you achieved them:
- Hari ini kami mencapai tujuan rapat.
  → Today we achieved the goals of the meeting.
Emphasize today’s meeting itself:
- Kami mencapai tujuan rapat hari ini. (natural as “today’s meeting goals”)
- Kami mencapai tujuan rapat hari ini sepenuhnya. (We fully achieved today’s meeting goals.)
- Or: Kami mencapai tujuan rapat hari ini can also be understood as “the meeting (that took place today)”.

Spoken intonation and broader context usually remove confusion.

Why is there no word for “did” or a past tense marker? How do we know this is past?

Indonesian verbs don’t change form for tense (no -ed, no -s, no will). Time is usually shown by:

time expressions: hari ini (today), kemarin (yesterday), besok (tomorrow)
optional aspect markers: sudah / telah (already), sedang (in progress), akan (will)

So:

Kami mencapai tujuan rapat hari ini.
→ Literally: We reach the goals of the meeting today.
→ Interpreted as past: We reached the goals of the meeting today.

You can make completion explicit by adding sudah:

Kami sudah mencapai tujuan rapat hari ini.
→ We have already achieved the goals of the meeting today.

But sudah is not required; hari ini and context are often enough.

Would it be more natural to say Kami sudah mencapai tujuan rapat hari ini?

Yes, that version is very natural and common:

Kami sudah mencapai tujuan rapat hari ini.
→ We have already achieved the goals of the meeting today.

Compared to the bare version:

Kami capai tujuan rapat hari ini. (short, headline-style / clipped)
Kami mencapai tujuan rapat hari ini. (neutral)
Kami sudah mencapai tujuan rapat hari ini. (neutral + clearly completed)

Adding sudah emphasizes that the achievement is finished.

Is rapat the only word for “meeting”? What about pertemuan?

Both rapat and pertemuan can mean “meeting”, but they feel slightly different:

rapat
- common for work / office / organizational meetings
- a bit more “business-like”
- tujuan rapat = objectives of the (formal) meeting
pertemuan
- literally “a meeting, an encounter”
- can be formal or informal (a gathering, encounter, session, etc.)
- tujuan pertemuan sounds fine, often in somewhat more formal or written contexts.

In your sentence, tujuan rapat is very natural in a business/office context.
You could also say:

Kami mencapai tujuan pertemuan hari ini.
This is grammatically correct, but feels a bit more formal / less “office-jargon” than tujuan rapat.

Can I change the word order, like Kami capai hari ini tujuan rapat?

No, that word order sounds wrong/unnatural in Indonesian.

The normal pattern is:

Subject + Verb + Object + (Time/Place)

So:

Kami mencapai tujuan rapat hari ini. ✅
Hari ini kami mencapai tujuan rapat. ✅ (just moving the time to the front)

But:

Kami mencapai hari ini tujuan rapat. ❌ (very unnatural)

Time expressions like hari ini usually go at the end or at the beginning, not in the middle of the verb and its object.

Is this sentence formal, informal, or neutral?

In its current clipped form:

Kami capai tujuan rapat hari ini.

it feels a bit like headline style or note style, because of:

dropped meN- prefix (capai instead of mencapai)
no aspect marker (sudah/telah)

To sound neutral and fully natural in most spoken and written contexts, you would usually say:

Kami mencapai tujuan rapat hari ini. (neutral)
Kami sudah mencapai tujuan rapat hari ini. (neutral, clearly completed)

The pronoun kami itself is neutral; what affects the style more here is capai vs mencapai and the presence/absence of sudah/telah.