Learn Hardcore Malay: Guru muzik percaya bahawa bakat akan berkembang jika murid berbakat pun berlatih dengan tekun. - The music teacher believes that talent will grow if even talented students still practise diligently.

Guru muzik percaya bahawa bakat akan berkembang jika murid berbakat pun berlatih dengan tekun.

The music teacher believes that talent will grow if even talented students still practise diligently.

Breakdown of Guru muzik percaya bahawa bakat akan berkembang jika murid berbakat pun berlatih dengan tekun.

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Questions & Answers about Guru muzik percaya bahawa bakat akan berkembang jika murid berbakat pun berlatih dengan tekun.

What does bahawa do in this sentence, and can I leave it out?

Bahawa introduces a that-clause, just like English that in:

The music teacher believes *that talent will develop…*

So:

Guru muzik percaya bahawa bakat akan berkembang…
= The music teacher believes *that talent will develop…*

In everyday spoken Malay, bahawa is often dropped, especially in shorter, simpler sentences:

Saya rasa (bahawa) dia betul.
I think (that) he’s right.

In this sentence, you can drop it and still be correct and natural:

Guru muzik percaya (bahawa) bakat akan berkembang…

Using bahawa sounds a bit more formal or careful. In writing, especially in essays or news, it’s very common to include it.

What exactly does akan mean here? Is it always “will” for future tense?

Akan is a future marker; it usually corresponds to English will / shall / going to.

bakat akan berkembang
literally: talent will develop / talent will grow

However, Malay doesn’t require a future marker the way English does. Often, context is enough:

Esok saya pergi.
Tomorrow I (will) go.

In this sentence, akan:

Highlights the idea that talent will, over time, develop
Makes the statement sound a little more predictive or general: a principle the teacher believes in

You could say:

bakat berkembang – talent develops (more general, less clearly future)
bakat akan berkembang – talent will develop (more explicitly about what happens as a result)

Both are grammatically correct, but akan adds a clearer sense of eventual development.

Why is it bakat akan berkembang and not something like akan mengembangkan bakat?

In bakat akan berkembang:

bakat = talent (subject)
berkembang = to grow, to develop (an intransitive verb: no direct object)

So it literally means:

Talent will develop / Talent will grow.
(Talent is doing the developing.)

If you said akan mengembangkan bakat, then:

mengembangkan is transitive = to develop something
(someone develops something else)

Examples:

Latihan yang baik akan mengembangkan bakat.
Good training will develop talent.
(Training is the subject; talent is the object.)

In the original sentence, the idea is that talent itself grows when students practice, so the intransitive berkembang is the natural choice:

bakat akan berkembang = talent will develop (by itself / in that person)

Why do we say murid berbakat if we already said bakat earlier? Isn’t that repetitive?

The repetition is normal and natural in Malay because each bakat plays a different role in the sentence:

bakat akan berkembang
- Here bakat = talent (in general), subject of the verb berkembang.
murid berbakat
- Here berbakat is an adjective meaning talented, describing the students.

So the sentence structure is:

bakat akan berkembang
Talent will develop
jika murid berbakat pun berlatih dengan tekun
if even talented students practice diligently.

You could paraphrase it as:

The music teacher believes that *talent will develop if students who are talented also practice diligently.*

The repeated root bakat (noun bakat, adjective berbakat) is completely normal and not considered bad style.

What does pun mean in murid berbakat pun berlatih? Is it “also” or “even”?

Pun is a flexible particle. In this sentence it means “even”, not just “also”.

murid berbakat pun berlatih dengan tekun
≈ even talented students practice diligently

The nuance:

Without pun:
jika murid berbakat berlatih dengan tekun
if talented students practice diligently (fairly neutral)
With pun:
jika murid berbakat pun berlatih dengan tekun
if even talented students practice diligently
→ suggests: talent alone isn’t enough; even they must practice.

Other common uses of pun:

Saya pun pergi. – I also went / I went too.
Dia tak datang pun. – He didn’t come at all.

Here, because of context and word order, pun gives a “even talented students…” emphasis.

What’s the difference between murid and pelajar? Both mean “student”, right?

Both murid and pelajar can translate as student, but there are nuances:

murid
- More commonly used for schoolchildren, especially primary and secondary school.
- Suggests a teacher–pupil relationship.
- Fits naturally with guru (teacher): guru dan murid (teacher and pupils).
pelajar
- More general: any learner / student.
- Very common for secondary school, college, university.
- You often see pelajar universiti (university students), pelajar kolej (college students).

In this sentence, murid fits well because guru muzik suggests a teacher with their pupils, typically at school or in lessons.

What’s the difference between berlatih, latih, and melatih?

They all come from the root latih (to train, to practice), but the prefixes change the meaning:

latih (root)
- You rarely use it alone in normal sentences; it appears inside other forms.
berlatih
- ber-
  - latih
- Means to practice / to train (oneself).
- Intransitive: no direct object.
- Example:
  Murid berbakat pun berlatih dengan tekun.
  Even talented students practice diligently.
melatih
- meN-
  - latih
- Means to train (someone else).
- Transitive: takes an object.
- Example:
  Guru muzik melatih murid-muridnya setiap hari.
  The music teacher trains his/her students every day.

So:

berlatih = to practice (what the student does)
melatih = to train someone (what the teacher does)

What does dengan tekun mean exactly? Could we just say berlatih tekun?

Dengan tekun literally means “with diligence” or “diligently”.

dengan = with
tekun = diligent, persistent, hardworking (in a focused way)

So:

berlatih dengan tekun = to practice diligently / to practice with diligence

Can you say berlatih tekun?
In colloquial speech, people sometimes drop dengan:

Dia belajar tekun.
Dia bekerja kuat.

But in standard Malay, for adverbial expressions like this, dengan + adjective is very common and sounds more natural and clear:

berlatih dengan tekun
bekerja dengan rajin
bercakap dengan jelas

So berlatih dengan tekun is stylistically good and idiomatic.

Can the jika-clause come first, like in English: “If even talented students practice diligently, talent will develop”?

Yes. Malay is quite flexible with clause order in this kind of sentence.

Both of these are correct:

Guru muzik percaya bahawa bakat akan berkembang jika murid berbakat pun berlatih dengan tekun.
- Main clause first, condition last.
Guru muzik percaya bahawa jika murid berbakat pun berlatih dengan tekun, bakat akan berkembang.
- Condition first, result later.

Just as in English, you usually add a comma if the conditional clause comes first:

… bahawa jika murid berbakat pun berlatih dengan tekun, bakat akan berkembang.

Both orders are natural. The choice is mostly about emphasis and flow, not grammar.

What’s the difference between jika and kalau?

Both can mean “if”, but there is a register difference:

jika
- More formal, often used in writing, official documents, textbooks, exams.
- Fits well in a sentence with bahawa and a more formal tone.
kalau
- More colloquial / everyday.
- Very common in spoken Malay and informal writing.

In this sentence, if you made it more casual, you could say:

Guru muzik percaya yang bakat akan berkembang kalau murid berbakat pun berlatih dengan tekun.

But in standard written style, jika is the better choice.

How do we understand the overall structure of the sentence?

Here’s a breakdown:

Guru muzik – the music teacher
percaya – believes
bahawa – that
bakat – talent
akan berkembang – will develop / will grow
jika – if
murid berbakat – talented students
pun – even
berlatih – practice
dengan tekun – diligently

So the structure is:

Guru muzik percaya bahawa…
The music teacher believes that…
bakat akan berkembang…
talent will develop…
jika murid berbakat pun berlatih dengan tekun.
if even talented students practice diligently.

Combined:

Guru muzik percaya bahawa bakat akan berkembang jika murid berbakat pun berlatih dengan tekun.
The music teacher believes that talent will develop if even talented students practice diligently.

There’s no plural marker for murid. How do we know it means “students” and not “student”?

Malay usually does not mark plural on nouns. Murid can mean:

a student or students, depending on context.

In this sentence:

jika murid berbakat pun berlatih dengan tekun
is more naturally understood as “if talented students…”, because:
- It talks about a general rule, not one specific person.
- The subject is indefinite (no seorang / “a” or specific name).

If you really wanted to make the plural explicit, you could say:

murid-murid berbakat – talented students (reduplication for plural)
But it’s not necessary; murid berbakat is already fine and normal.

Why is it guru muzik and not something like guru musik?

Muzik is the standard Malay spelling for music.

In Indonesian, the word is musik.
In Malay (Malaysia / Brunei / Singapore), the word is muzik.

So in standard Malay, guru muzik is correct and means:

guru – teacher
muzik – music

→ guru muzik = music teacher.

How does Malay show tense here? Is the sentence past, present, or future?

Malay does not have tenses like English (no verb conjugation for past/present/future). Time is expressed by:

Time words: semalam (yesterday), esok (tomorrow), sekarang (now)
Optional markers like akan (will), sudah / telah (already), sedang (in the process of)

In this sentence:

percaya – neutral (no tense)
akan – adds a future-like sense: will develop

So, depending on context, the sentence most naturally expresses a general belief about what happens (a kind of timeless principle), but grammatically it’s closest to:

The music teacher believes that talent *will develop if even talented students practice diligently.*

Without akan, it could be more generic:

… percaya bahawa bakat berkembang jika…
believes that talent develops if… (a general truth)

The actual time reference is decided by context, not by verb forms.