Cuaca berubah cepat pagi tadi.

this morning

Breakdown of Cuaca berubah cepat pagi tadi.

• cuaca: the weather
• cepat: quickly
• berubah: to change

Questions & Answers about Cuaca berubah cepat pagi tadi.

Why is berubah used instead of ubah?

ubah is a transitive verb meaning “to change (something),” so it needs an object (e.g. “Saya ubah aturcara” = “I change the schedule”). berubah is the intransitive form (prefix ber-) meaning “to change” or “to become different” by itself. In Cuaca berubah…, the weather is doing the changing, so you use berubah.

Why isn’t berubah marked for past tense?

Malay verbs do not inflect for tense. Instead, time reference comes from context or time markers. Here, pagi tadi (“this morning”) tells you it happened in the past, so no verb ending is needed.

What role does cepat play in this sentence?

cepat is functioning as an adverb meaning “quickly.” In Malay, many adjectives can serve directly as adverbs without any change. So cepat modifies the verb berubah: “changed quickly.”

Why is cepat placed after berubah? Could it go elsewhere?

The default order is Subject–Verb–Adverb (SVA). That’s why you see cuaca (S) berubah (V) cepat (A). You could also say Cuaca cepat berubah pagi tadi without changing the meaning, though it puts more emphasis on how fast the change happened before you hear the verb.