Pola tidur saya berubah belakangan ini karena belajar sampai malam.

My sleeping pattern has changed lately because I study until late at night.

Breakdown of Pola tidur saya berubah belakangan ini karena belajar sampai malam.

• karena: because
• belajar: to study
• berubah: to change
• saya: my
• malam: the night
• sampai: until
• belakangan ini: lately
• pola tidur: the sleep pattern

Questions & Answers about Pola tidur saya berubah belakangan ini karena belajar sampai malam.

What does pola mean, and is pola tidur a common expression?

Pola means pattern or arrangement.

Pola tidur literally means sleeping pattern or sleep schedule, and it’s a very natural, common way to say this in Indonesian.

Other natural options include:

• kebiasaan tidur – sleeping habits
• jam tidur – sleeping hours

But in a sentence like this, pola tidur is perfectly standard and maybe slightly more formal/neutral than kebiasaan tidur.

Why is it pola tidur saya and not saya punya pola tidur?

Indonesian usually shows possession with a possessive pronoun after the noun, not with a verb like “have”.

• pola tidur saya = my sleep pattern
  
  • pola tidur = sleep pattern
  • saya after the noun = my

Saya punya pola tidur is grammatically correct, but it literally means “I have a sleep pattern”, which sounds a bit odd and unnecessary here.

To say “my X”, Indonesians almost always prefer:

• X saya – my X
• X kamu – your X
• X dia – his/her X

So pola tidur saya is the natural way to say “my sleep pattern”.

What is the function of berubah here, and how is it different from mengubah?

Berubah and mengubah both come from the root ubah (change), but:

• berubah = to change (intransitive; something changes by itself or as a state)

  • Pola tidur saya berubah.
    My sleep pattern has changed.

• mengubah = to change (something) (transitive; you change something)

  • Belajar sampai malam mengubah pola tidur saya.
    Studying until late changes my sleep pattern.

In your sentence, pola tidur saya berubah means “my sleep pattern has changed”, focusing on the resulting state, not on who is doing the changing. That’s why berubah is used, not mengubah.

How should I understand belakangan ini? Is it the same as “recently” or “lately”?

Yes. Belakangan ini means “lately / recently / in recent times”.

It’s a time expression that usually refers to a period stretching over the recent past up until now, similar to English “lately”.

Rough comparison:

• belakangan ini – lately, over the recent period
• akhir-akhir ini – also “lately”; very similar; maybe a bit more common in casual speech
• baru-baru ini – recently, but often feels a bit more like “the other day / a short time ago”, sometimes for more specific events

In this sentence, belakangan ini is perfectly natural and means that the sleep pattern has been changing over the last days/weeks.

Where can belakangan ini go in the sentence? Is the current position the only correct one?

The current position is natural, but it’s not the only possible one. Indonesian word order is quite flexible, especially for time expressions.

Original:

• Pola tidur saya berubah belakangan ini karena belajar sampai malam.

Other natural options:

• Belakangan ini pola tidur saya berubah karena belajar sampai malam.
• Pola tidur saya belakangan ini berubah karena belajar sampai malam.

Starting with belakangan ini is common when you want to emphasize the time period, similar to English:

• Lately, my sleep pattern has changed…

All of these are grammatical and sound natural. The difference is mostly about emphasis and style.

Why is there no subject in belajar sampai malam? Shouldn’t it be saya belajar sampai malam?

The subject saya is understood from the previous part of the sentence and is usually dropped in Indonesian when it’s obvious.

Full version (also correct, just more explicit):

• Pola tidur saya berubah belakangan ini karena saya belajar sampai malam.

But Indonesian frequently omits repeated subjects when the meaning is clear, especially in spoken language. So:

• …karena belajar sampai malam
  is understood as
• …because (I) study until night.

This “subject dropping” is very common and natural.

What does sampai malam literally mean, and how is it used?

Sampai malam literally means “until night” or “up to the night”.

In practice, it usually means:

• until (late into) the evening / at least until night-time

So belajar sampai malam is close to:

• study until late at night / study until nighttime

You will often hear:

• sampai malam – until (the) night
• sampai larut malam – until late at night (stronger sense of “very late”)
• sampai tengah malam – until midnight

In everyday speech, sampai malam already implies “quite late” unless context says otherwise.

Can I replace sampai with hingga here? Are they the same?

Yes, you can. Sampai and hingga are very close in meaning and often interchangeable.

• belajar sampai malam
• belajar hingga malam

Both mean “study until night”.

Nuance:

• sampai – very common in spoken and written Indonesian
• hingga – slightly more formal/literary in some contexts, but still common and not strange

In casual conversation, sampai is more frequent, but hingga is fully correct.

Why is it just malam and not di malam for “at night”?

In Indonesian, time expressions usually appear without a preposition when they just indicate “when” something happens.

Common patterns:

• pagi – in the morning
• siang – at midday / in the day
• sore – in the late afternoon / early evening
• malam – at night

Examples:

• Saya belajar malam. – I study at night.
• Kami berangkat pagi. – We leave in the morning.

You only use di with time when the phrase is more like a specific point or date:

• di malam tahun baru – on New Year’s Eve (literally “on the night of New Year”)
• di pagi hari itu – on that morning

So sampai malam (until night) is natural and does not need di.

What exactly does karena do in this sentence, and where can it go?

Karena means “because” and introduces the reason.

In your sentence:

• …berubah belakangan ini karena belajar sampai malam.
  …has changed lately because (I’ve been) studying until late.

It links the cause (belajar sampai malam) to the result (pola tidur saya berubah).

You can also move the karena-clause to the front:

• Karena belajar sampai malam, pola tidur saya berubah belakangan ini.
  Because I study until late, my sleep pattern has changed lately.

Both orders are common; Indonesians often put the reason (karena …) either:

• at the end (very common in speech), or
• at the start when emphasizing the cause.

Could I say karena belajar sampai larut malam? What’s the nuance of larut malam?

Yes, that’s natural, and it actually sounds a bit stronger.

• malam = night
• larut malam = late at night (literally “deep night”)

So:

• belajar sampai malam – study until night (often “until the evening / nighttime”)
• belajar sampai larut malam – study until late at night (suggests very late, maybe near midnight)

Using larut malam emphasizes that it’s not just normal evening hours, but quite late.

Is this sentence formal, informal, or neutral? Would it sound okay in casual speech?

The sentence is neutral and works well in both casual and semi-formal contexts.

Elements like:

• saya – neutral/formal “I”
• berubah, belakangan ini, karena – standard, neutral vocabulary

In very casual speech with friends, someone might say something like:

• Belakangan ini jam tidur gue berubah gara-gara belajar sampai malam.

Here, gue (I) and gara-gara (because, a bit more casual/colloquial than karena) make it more informal.

But your original sentence is perfectly fine in everyday conversation, in class, or in writing.

How is tense expressed here? How do we know it’s “has changed” and not “changes”?

Indonesian generally does not use verb tenses the way English does. There’s no change in the verb form for past/present/future.

• berubah can mean:
  • changes
  • changed
  • has changed
  • is changing

The time frame is understood from context and from time expressions like belakangan ini.

• belakangan ini strongly suggests “lately / recently”, so the most natural English translation is:
  • “My sleep pattern has changed lately…”
    or
  • “My sleep pattern has been changing lately…”

If the sentence had setiap hari (every day), we’d translate differently:

• Pola tidur saya berubah setiap hari.
  My sleep pattern changes every day.

So the Indonesian verb stays the same; you adjust the English tense based on context words like belakangan ini, kemarin, besok, etc.