Breakdown of Beberapa bagian jalur memang menegangkan, tetapi justru di sana kami saling membantu paling banyak.
Questions & Answers about Beberapa bagian jalur memang menegangkan, tetapi justru di sana kami saling membantu paling banyak.
Memang is a particle that roughly means “indeed / actually / really / it’s true that”.
In this sentence:
- Beberapa bagian jalur memang menegangkan
→ “Some parts of the route were indeed tense/scary.”
Memang:
- Confirms or emphasizes that something is truly the case.
- Often introduces a fact that will be contrasted or commented on in the next clause.
If you remove it:
- Beberapa bagian jalur menegangkan
→ Still correct; just more neutral: “Some parts of the route were tense.”
With memang, it feels like:
- “I admit / It’s true that some parts of the route were tense, but…”
So it prepares the contrast with tetapi justru….
It’s not grammatically required, but it’s very natural and adds nuance.
Menegangkan comes from tegang (tense, tight) + the verb-forming prefix-suffix me-…-kan.
Its core meaning is:
- “to be tense / nerve-racking / suspenseful”
rather than purely “scary” (menakutkan) or “dangerous” (berbahaya).
In context, menegangkan suggests:
- Your heart is pounding, there is suspense.
- The situation is intense, maybe risky, but not necessarily life-threatening horror.
So:
- menegangkan ≈ nerve-wracking, thrilling, tense.
- menakutkan ≈ frightening, scary.
- berbahaya ≈ dangerous.
Here it’s more like “some parts of the route were really nerve‑racking” than “deadly dangerous.”
Both jalur and jalan involve the idea of a path, but they differ:
Jalan = road, street, way (very general).
- Physical roads: jalan raya (main road), jalan kecil (small road).
- Also metaphorical: jalan keluar (way out / solution).
Jalur = route / track / lane / specific path.
- Hiking route: jalur pendakian.
- Train line: jalur kereta.
- Traffic lane: jalur kiri (left lane).
In beberapa bagian jalur, jalur suggests a specific route or track they are following (e.g., hiking trail, climbing route), not just any random road in a city.
You could often say bagian jalan in everyday situations, but bagian jalur sounds more like a set route (e.g., a trail or course).
Both forms are possible, but they’re slightly different:
Beberapa bagian jalur memang menegangkan
Literally: “Several parts of the route were tense.”- Beberapa bagian jalur = the subject.
- Focus: those parts themselves.
Di beberapa bagian jalur memang menegangkan
- More literally: “In some parts of the route, (it) was tense.”
- More natural if you add a subject:
Di beberapa bagian jalur, situasinya memang menegangkan.
→ “In some parts of the route, the situation was indeed tense.”
Version (1) is shorter and more straightforward: it nominates “some parts of the route” as the subject that “were tense.” That’s why di is not used there; beberapa bagian jalur is not a location phrase but the main subject noun phrase.
- Tetapi = but / however, a straight contrast.
- Justru = precisely / actually / on the contrary / unexpectedly.
Together, tetapi justru strengthens the unexpected contrast:
- Tetapi introduces the opposite idea.
- Justru says: and surprisingly, it was exactly there that something else happened.
In the sentence:
- …menegangkan, tetapi justru di sana kami saling membantu paling banyak. → “..., but it was precisely there that we helped each other the most.”
If you used only tetapi:
- Still correct, but less expressive: “but over there we helped each other the most.”
If you used only justru:
- Still correct in many contexts, but less clearly a contrast with the previous clause.
Tetapi justru together is a common, natural way to say “but in fact (and quite surprisingly), …”
Literally, di sana = “there” (over there, that place).
In this sentence, it refers back to beberapa bagian jalur:
- Not a single point, but “in those tense sections of the route.”
So it’s a place reference, but it can be understood slightly more loosely in English as:
- “in those parts” / “in those sections” / “in those spots”.
It’s still spatial, not temporal. If it were purely “at that time”, you’d more likely see waktu itu or saat itu.
Both mean “we,” but:
- Kami = we (not including you, the listener).
- Kita = we (including you, the listener).
Here, kami implies:
- The speaker is talking about a group that does not include the person being spoken to (or the audience).
- “We (my group) helped each other the most there” – but you were not part of that group.
If the speaker and listener had experienced the route together, you would expect:
- …di sana kita saling membantu paling banyak.
→ “...there we helped each other the most (you and I included).”
Saling is a reciprocal marker; it means “each other / one another”.
- membantu = to help.
- saling membantu = to help each other / to help one another.
So:
- kami membantu paling banyak
→ “we helped the most” (could mean we helped other people). - kami saling membantu paling banyak
→ “we helped each other the most” (mutual help within the group).
Saling can be used with many verbs to show reciprocity:
- saling mengenal = to know each other.
- saling menghormati = to respect each other.
- saling menyayangi = to love/care for each other.
In this sentence it emphasizes mutual support within the group.
Paling is a superlative marker: “most / -est”.
Banyak means “many / much / a lot”.
Together, paling banyak ≈ “the most (in quantity)”.
In kami saling membantu paling banyak, it literally reads:
- “we helped each other the most (there).”
Word order:
- Adverbs and adverbial phrases often come after the verb phrase in Indonesian.
- So: kami (subject) + saling membantu (verb phrase) + paling banyak (degree/amount).
If you tried to move paling banyak earlier, like:
- ✗ kami paling banyak saling membantu
– Possible, but it changes the rhythm and can feel slightly awkward or marked in many contexts.
Ending with paling banyak is very natural and keeps the emphasis on “that’s where we did it the most.”
Yes, that reordering is grammatically correct and natural:
- Original:
…tetapi justru di sana kami saling membantu paling banyak. - Reordered:
…tetapi di sana justru kami saling membantu paling banyak.
Di sana justru kami saling membantu paling banyak.
The differences are subtle and mostly about emphasis:
- justru di sana → slightly more emphasis on the location: “it was precisely there that…”
- di sana justru → more emphasis on the unexpectedness of what happened there: “there, unexpectedly, we…”
All of these variants are natural; spoken intonation will usually carry the nuance more than the exact word order in this kind of short clause.
Yes, memang and justru often appear in the same overall structure:
- (Clause A) memang …, tetapi (Clause B) justru …
Pattern:
- Memang in the first clause:
- Admits or confirms something: “It’s true that…”
- Tetapi justru in the second clause:
- Introduces an unexpected or contrasting result: “but actually / but in fact…”
Example similar to your sentence:
- Dia memang pemalu, tetapi justru di panggung dia terlihat sangat percaya diri.
“He is shy, but it’s precisely on stage that he looks very confident.”
In your sentence:
- …jalur memang menegangkan = “it really was tense.”
- tetapi justru di sana… = “but precisely there (contrary to what you might expect)…”
So memang sets up a fact; justru highlights the surprising twist relative to that fact.