Breakdown of Dalam kelas sejarah, guru menunjukkan perenggan penting yang mesti kami hafal.
Questions & Answers about Dalam kelas sejarah, guru menunjukkan perenggan penting yang mesti kami hafal.
Both dalam and di can be translated as “in” in English, but they’re used a bit differently.
di = at / in / on (location marker, quite general)
- di kelas – in/at the classroom
- di sekolah – at school
dalam = inside / within (emphasises being inside something, or sometimes “within” in a more abstract sense)
- dalam kelas – inside the class
- dalam beg – inside the bag
- dalam buku – in the book
In dalam kelas sejarah, the idea can be:
- physically inside the history classroom, or
- within the history lesson (more abstract: during the history class).
You could also say di kelas sejarah, and it would still be natural. Dalam just adds a slight sense of inside/within, while di is a more neutral location marker.
Malay word order is flexible with time/place phrases. You can put them:
- At the beginning:
- Dalam kelas sejarah, guru menunjukkan perenggan penting…
- Or later in the sentence:
- Guru menunjukkan perenggan penting dalam kelas sejarah…
Starting with Dalam kelas sejarah sets the scene or context first (like English “In history class, …”). Both orders are grammatical; putting the location first just emphasizes where it happened.
Malay has no articles like a/an/the. The word guru by itself can mean:
- a teacher
- the teacher
- teachers (in some contexts)
The exact meaning comes from context, not from the word form.
If you want to be more specific, you can add information:
- seorang guru – a teacher (one teacher)
- guru saya – my teacher
- guru sejarah itu – that history teacher / the history teacher
In your sentence, guru menunjukkan… is naturally understood as “the teacher” (the one teaching that class), because you’re already in the context of kelas sejarah.
The base verb is tunjuk = to show / point at.
menunjukkan is:
- meN- + tunjuk + -kan → menunjukkan
- It usually means “to show something to someone” or “to demonstrate/give a display of something”.
Roughly:
- tunjuk – show/point (more basic, often used in casual speech)
- menunjukkan – show, demonstrate (more formal/complete verb form; clearly transitive)
Examples:
- Guru tunjuk gambar. – The teacher shows a picture. (informal, very common in speech)
- Guru menunjukkan gambar kepada kami. – The teacher shows a picture to us. (more formal/clear)
In guru menunjukkan perenggan penting, menunjukkan clearly takes perenggan penting as its object: the teacher showed us the important paragraph.
Perenggan means “paragraph”.
Malay often does not need a separate word for “a / one” when it’s obvious from context that you’re talking about one item.
- perenggan penting – an important paragraph / the important paragraph
- buku tebal – a thick book / the thick book
If you want to emphasise one paragraph, you can say:
- satu perenggan penting – one important paragraph
- sebuah perenggan penting – one important paragraph (with a classifier; less common with perenggan but possible)
In normal context, perenggan penting is enough; the listener usually understands if it’s one or several from the situation.
Malay word order for noun + adjective is usually:
- [Noun] + [Adjective]
So:
- perenggan penting – important paragraph
- buku menarik – interesting book
- kelas sejarah – history class
So you say perenggan penting, not penting perenggan.
Think of it like: “paragraph that is important” → perenggan penting.
Yang is a relative pronoun or marker that introduces a relative clause, similar to “that / which / who” in English.
Structure:
- perenggan penting – the important paragraph
- yang mesti kami hafal – that we must memorize
Put together:
- perenggan penting yang mesti kami hafal
→ the important paragraph that we must memorize.
So yang connects the noun (perenggan penting) to the clause that describes it (mesti kami hafal).
mesti generally means “must / have to”, showing strong obligation.
Simplified differences:
- mesti – must (strongest sense of obligation, often non‑negotiable)
- Kami mesti hafal. – We must memorize (no choice).
- harus – should / must (somewhere between should and must; often more formal)
- Kami harus hafal. – We should/must memorize.
- perlu – need to (focus on necessity)
- Kami perlu hafal. – We need to memorize.
In a classroom context, mesti sounds like the teacher has clearly decided this is compulsory.
Yes, both kami and kita mean “we”, but they differ in inclusiveness:
- kami – we (not including the listener)
- kita – we (including the listener)
In this sentence, the speaker is a student talking to someone outside the class (or not including the teacher), so they use:
- kami hafal – we (the students) must memorize
If the speaker were including the listener in “we” (for example, talking to a classmate and including them), kita could appear in some contexts, but in this specific structure referring to what students must do, kami is the natural choice, excluding the teacher.
Both word orders are possible:
- Kami mesti hafal. – We must memorize.
- … yang mesti kami hafal. – … that we must memorize.
In your sentence, “yang mesti kami hafal” is a relative clause. Inside such clauses, it’s very natural to have:
- mesti + subject + verb → mesti kami hafal
But yang kami mesti hafal is also understood. The chosen order yang mesti kami hafal sounds smooth and is very common in written Malay.
In simple main clauses (not relative clauses), Kami mesti hafal is the most straightforward order.
Both relate to memorizing, but there’s a nuance:
- hafal – can be a verb (“to memorize”) or an adjective-like state (“to know by heart”).
- Saya perlu hafal teks ini. – I need to memorize this text.
- Saya sudah hafal teks ini. – I already know this text by heart.
- menghafal – clearly a verb “to memorize” (meN- verb form).
- Saya sedang menghafal teks ini. – I am memorizing this text.
In mesti kami hafal, hafal works smoothly as “must (go and) memorize / must know by heart”.
You could also say yang mesti kami menghafal, but it’s more common and simpler in this context to just use hafal.
Malay does not mark past/present/future by changing the verb form. The verb menunjukkan can mean:
- shows / is showing / showed / will show
Tense is understood from:
- time words:
- tadi – earlier
- semalam – yesterday
- esok – tomorrow
- context in the conversation or narrative.
So:
- Dalam kelas sejarah, guru menunjukkan perenggan penting…
could be:- In history class, the teacher shows the important paragraph… (habitual)
- In history class, the teacher showed the important paragraph… (past)
If you want to make it clearly past, you can add a time word:
- Tadi dalam kelas sejarah, guru menunjukkan perenggan penting…
– Earlier in history class, the teacher showed the important paragraph…