Dia baru sahaja mula tercekik.

Dia is the common Malay third-person singular pronoun. It can mean he or she because Malay does not usually mark gender in pronouns.

So Dia baru sahaja mula tercekik could mean either:

• He has just started choking
• She has just started choking

You only know which one from context.

Baru sahaja means just, in the sense of only a very short time ago.

In this sentence, it tells you that the action of starting happened very recently. So the idea is not just started choking, but has only just started choking.

You do not have to use both.

These are all possible:

• Dia baru mula tercekik.
• Dia baru sahaja mula tercekik.
• Dia baru saja mula tercekik. — very common in speech and informal writing

Using baru sahaja sounds a bit more complete, and sometimes slightly more formal or emphatic than just baru. But baru by itself is very common and natural.

Malay does not need a separate word like the English infinitive marker to in this kind of structure.

So:

• mula tercekik = start to choke / begin choking

This is a very normal Malay pattern: one verb can be followed directly by another verb.

Other similar examples are:

• mula makan = start eating
• cuba buka = try opening / try to open
• mahu pergi = want to go

Tercekik means to choke or to be choking, usually in the sense that something is stuck or someone cannot breathe properly.

In this sentence, it refers to the onset of choking, so the whole phrase mula tercekik means to start choking.

It is not usually something deliberate. It describes something that happens to someone.

The prefix ter- often gives the idea that something happens:

• unintentionally
• accidentally
• as a state that someone ends up in

So in many words, ter- suggests that the event is not deliberate.

With tercekik, that fits the meaning well, because choking is normally not intentional. In practice, though, tercekik is best learned as a whole word meaning to choke / get choked rather than trying to translate the prefix separately every time.

Malay verbs do not change form for tense the way English verbs do.

Instead, Malay often uses:

• time words
• aspect markers
• context

Here, baru sahaja tells you the event happened very recently, so the natural English meaning is:

• just started choking
• has just started choking

The exact English tense you choose depends on style and context, but the Malay sentence itself does not need a tense ending.

The sentence breaks down like this:

• Dia = he/she
• baru sahaja = just
• mula = start
• tercekik = choke

So the structure is basically:

subject + recent-time marker + verb + second verb

A very literal gloss would be:

He/She just started choke

But natural English is:

He/She has just started choking.

The difference is in focus:

• Dia baru sahaja mula tercekik = He/She has just started choking
• Dia sedang tercekik = He/She is choking

The first sentence focuses on the beginning of the choking. The second focuses on the action or state already being in progress.

So if someone only just began choking, baru sahaja mula is more precise.

Yes. Both are good English translations.

Malay does not force the same tense choices that English does, so both of these can represent Dia baru sahaja mula tercekik well:

• He just started choking
• He has just started choking

The best choice depends on the kind of English you are using and the surrounding context.