Word
Untuk menenangkan bayi itu, nenek mengelus kepalanya dan bernyanyi pelan.
Meaning
To calm the baby, Grandmother strokes the baby’s head and sings softly.
Part of speech
sentence
Pronunciation
Course
Lesson
Breakdown of Untuk menenangkan bayi itu, nenek mengelus kepalanya dan bernyanyi pelan.
itu
that
dan
and
untuk
to
nya
his/her
Questions & Answers about Untuk menenangkan bayi itu, nenek mengelus kepalanya dan bernyanyi pelan.
What does untuk mean here?
Here, untuk introduces a purpose phrase: untuk menenangkan bayi itu = to calm/soothe the baby or in order to calm the baby.
So the sentence structure is:
- Untuk menenangkan bayi itu, = To calm the baby,
- nenek mengelus kepalanya dan bernyanyi pelan. = grandmother stroked his/her head and sang softly.
In Indonesian, untuk + verb is a very common way to express purpose.
Why is it menenangkan, not just tenang?
Tenang means calm or peaceful.
menenangkan comes from the root tenang with affixes:
- meN- ... -kan
This makes it into a verb meaning to make someone calm, to calm, or to soothe.
So:
- tenang = calm
- menenangkan = to calm someone / to soothe someone
This is a very common Indonesian pattern:
- bersih = clean
- membersihkan = to clean something
- tenang = calm
- menenangkan = to calm something/someone