Questions & Answers about Seringkali saya merasa tidak fasih, padahal teman-teman mengatakan pengucapan saya sudah jauh membaik.
All three relate to “often / frequently.”
- seringkali – written as one word; adverb meaning “often, very often, frequently.”
- sering kali – two words; essentially the same meaning as seringkali. Many native speakers use them interchangeably.
- sering – also means “often”, but a bit more neutral.
- seringkali/sering kali can sound slightly more emphatic or “habitual,” like “I so often feel…”
In this sentence, you could also say:
- Saya sering merasa tidak fasih…
The meaning is almost the same; the nuance difference is very small.
All of these orders are grammatically possible, but they differ slightly in emphasis and naturalness:
Seringkali saya merasa tidak fasih…
– Fronting seringkali makes “often” the focus:
“Often, I feel not fluent…”
It sounds natural and gives a bit of rhetorical emphasis.Saya sering merasa tidak fasih…
– Very common, maybe the most neutral:
“I often feel not fluent…”Saya merasa seringkali tidak fasih…
– Less common and a bit clunky. It sounds like you’re emphasizing the frequency of “not fluent” in a more awkward way.
So the original “Seringkali saya merasa…” is a stylistic choice that front-loads the idea of frequency.
Both tidak fasih and tidak lancar can translate to “not fluent”, but they have slightly different flavors:
fasih – often used specifically for speaking or language ability; feels a bit more formal or “textbook-y.”
- tidak fasih ≈ “not fluent (in a language)”
lancar – means smooth, flowing (can refer to speech, traffic, processes, etc.).
- tidak lancar ≈ “not smooth / halting”, but in language context it also means “not fluent.”
In this sentence:
- Saya merasa tidak fasih = I feel I’m not fluent (as a speaker of the language).
- Saya merasa tidak lancar would also be natural, with a slightly more colloquial feel in many contexts.
Padahal is a conjunction introducing a contrast between two facts, roughly:
- “whereas”
- “even though”
- “but actually / when in fact”
In the sentence:
- Seringkali saya merasa tidak fasih, padahal teman-teman mengatakan pengucapan saya sudah jauh membaik.
You can understand padahal as:
- “I often feel I’m not fluent, *even though / whereas my friends say my pronunciation has improved a lot.”*
It highlights a mismatch between the speaker’s feelings and the friends’ evaluation.
You could technically split it into two sentences:
- Seringkali saya merasa tidak fasih. Padahal teman-teman mengatakan…
That’s still acceptable in informal writing, but the comma version is more standard.
In Indonesian, reduplication (repeating a noun) often marks plurality or “many.”
- teman = friend (singular, or generic)
- teman-teman = friends (plural)
The hyphen is the standard way to write reduplication: NOUN-NOUN.
So:
- teman saya = my friend
- teman-teman saya = my friends
If you said padahal teman mengatakan…, it would sound like just one friend (or unspecified). Teman-teman makes it clear multiple friends say this.
The verb mengatakan (“to say, to state”) often introduces a clause:
- mengatakan bahwa… = “to say that…”
In everyday Indonesian, bahwa is frequently omitted when the meaning is clear.
- teman-teman mengatakan pengucapan saya sudah jauh membaik
≈ “my friends say (that) my pronunciation has improved a lot.”
Both of these are correct:
- …mengatakan bahwa pengucapan saya… (a bit more explicit/formal)
- …mengatakan pengucapan saya… (more concise, very common in speech)
Both come from the root ucap (to say/utter), but they’re used differently:
pengucapan = pronunciation, the act or way of pronouncing sounds/words
- pengucapan saya = my pronunciation
ucapan = an utterance / words / a saying / a greeting
- ucapan selamat = congratulations (the words)
- ucapan terima kasih = words of thanks / expression of thanks
So, in this sentence, pengucapan is correct because we are talking about how the speaker pronounces words, not about specific phrases or greetings.
Breakdown:
- sudah – already
- jauh – literally “far,” but often used as an intensifier meaning “much, far more/less”
- membaik – to get better, to improve
So sudah jauh membaik ≈ “has already improved a lot / has gotten much better.”
Here, jauh doesn’t talk about physical distance; it intensifies the improvement:
- sudah membaik = has improved
- sudah jauh membaik = has improved a lot / by far
You could also hear alternatives like:
- sudah sangat membaik
- sudah banyak membaik
All mean there’s a significant improvement.
Sudah indicates that a change or process has already occurred or has been completed to some degree.
pengucapan saya membaik
– grammatically okay, but feels like a general statement: “my pronunciation improves / is improving.”pengucapan saya sudah membaik
– natural way to say: “my pronunciation has improved (by now).”
In the original:
- pengucapan saya sudah jauh membaik
emphasizes that by this point, there has already been a big improvement.
You could omit sudah, but you would lose that clear “already” / “by now” nuance, and it would sound less natural in this context.
Both are correct, but they differ in formality and tone:
- saya – more formal / neutral; safe in almost any situation (talking to strangers, in writing, to older people, at work, etc.).
- aku – more informal / intimate; used with friends, family, or in casual speech/writing.
So you could say:
- Seringkali saya merasa tidak fasih… (neutral, slightly formal)
- Seringkali aku merasa tidak fasih… (more personal/intimate, casual)
Choosing saya in this sentence makes it sound like a neutral narrative voice, which fits both spoken and written contexts.