Mission—Team—Privacy—Terms—Sponsors—Typing Course—Donate

© 2026 Elon Automation B.V.

Learn Hardcore Malay: Bil internet itu tinggi bulan ini. - That internet bill is high this month.

Hardcore Malay
/Lesson 29
/Bil internet itu tinggi bulan ini.

Bil internet itu tinggi bulan ini.

Word

Bil internet itu tinggi bulan ini.

Meaning

That internet bill is high this month.

Part of speech

sentence

Pronunciation

Course

Lesson

Breakdown of Bil internet itu tinggi bulan ini.

the internet bill

Questions & Answers about Bil internet itu tinggi bulan ini.

What does each word in Bil internet itu tinggi bulan ini correspond to in English?

Word-by-word:

Bil – bill (as in a payment invoice)
internet – internet
itu – that / the (demonstrative; points to a specific thing)
tinggi – high (here used in the sense of high/expensive)
bulan – month
ini – this

So a more literal breakdown is something like: Bill internet that high month this → That internet bill is high this month.

Why is there no word for is (the verb to be) in this sentence?

In Malay, when you link:

a noun (subject) + an adjective (description)

you normally do not use a word like is / am / are.

So:

Bil internet itu tinggi. → The internet bill is high.
Dia penat. → He/She is tired.
Rumah itu besar. → That house is big.

You simply put the noun before the adjective. The to be verb is understood from context and word order, not stated explicitly.

Malay only uses words like ialah or adalah in more formal situations, mainly to link nouns to nouns (e.g. Malaysia ialah sebuah negara – ), not with adjectives like .

Elon.io is an online learning platform

We have an entire course teaching Malay grammar and vocabulary.

Start learning Malay now

Malaysia is a country

tinggi

What does itu do here, and can I leave it out?

Itu is a demonstrative that usually means that, but very often it just works like a kind of the or that particular.

In Bil internet itu tinggi bulan ini, itu shows that we are talking about a specific internet bill that both speaker and listener know about (for example, the one that just arrived).

With itu: Bil internet itu tinggi bulan ini.
→ That (particular) internet bill is high this month.
Without itu: Bil internet tinggi bulan ini.
→ More like Internet bills are high this month / Internet billing is high this month (more general).

So yes, you can leave it out, but the meaning becomes more general and less “this specific bill we’re talking about”.

Can itu be put at the end of the sentence, like Bil internet tinggi bulan ini itu?

No, that’s not natural Malay.

In Malay, itu normally comes:

right after the noun it modifies:
- bil itu, internet itu, rumah itu
or sometimes after a whole noun phrase:
- bil internet itu (the whole noun phrase is bil internet)

Putting itu at the end of the whole sentence (…bulan ini itu) is not how Malay works. It will sound wrong or at best confusing.

Is tinggi literally high, and is it natural to use it to mean expensive here?

Literally, tinggi means high / tall (in height or level). But Malay uses tinggi metaphorically for high amounts:

harga tinggi – high price (expensive)
gaji tinggi – high salary
bil elektrik tinggi – high electricity bill

So Bil internet itu tinggi is idiomatic. It means the amount of the internet bill is high, which in normal English is expressed as the internet bill is expensive or the bill is high.

You could also say:

Bil internet itu mahal bulan ini. – The internet bill is expensive this month.

Mahal directly means expensive (not just high in a numeric sense), but in this context tinggi is very natural and common.

Why is the word order Bil internet itu tinggi bulan ini? Could I say Bulan ini bil internet itu tinggi?

Both are grammatically correct. The difference is emphasis and flow, not basic meaning.

Bil internet itu tinggi bulan ini.
- Neutral, default statement.
- Focus is on the internet bill: what about it? It is high this month.
Bulan ini, bil internet itu tinggi.
- Fronting bulan ini gives it emphasis:
  This month, the internet bill is high.
- Sounds a bit more like you’re contrasting this month with other months.

In everyday speech, you’ll often hear the original order, but fronting bulan ini is also perfectly natural when you want to highlight the time.

Why is there no pronoun like our in the sentence? How would I say Our internet bill is high this month?

Malay doesn’t require a pronoun if it’s already clear from context whose bill you’re talking about. Bil internet itu is enough when everyone knows it’s our bill.

If you want to make it explicit:

Bil internet kami tinggi bulan ini. – Our internet bill is high this month.
Bil internet kita tinggi bulan ini. – Our internet bill is high this month. (inclusive we: including the listener)

Here, kami = we/us (excluding the listener), kita = we/us (including the listener).

Is bil just borrowed from English bill? Is there a more “Malay” word?

Yes, bil is a loanword from English bill, and it’s extremely common and natural in everyday Malay, especially for:

bil elektrik – electricity bill
bil air – water bill
bil telefon – phone bill
bil internet – internet bill

There are other words like invois (invoice) or resit (receipt), but bil is the standard casual term. Using bil does not sound less “proper”; it’s normal modern Malay.

What does bulan ini literally mean, and where can it appear in the sentence?

Literally:

bulan – month
ini – this

So bulan ini = this month.

It’s a time expression and can usually appear:

at the end:
- Bil internet itu tinggi bulan ini.
at the beginning (for emphasis):
- Bulan ini, bil internet itu tinggi.
occasionally in the middle, but usually we keep it near the end or at the front for clarity.

You can also make it slightly more formal with pada:

Pada bulan ini, bil internet itu tinggi. – In this month, the internet bill is high.

In speech, bulan ini at the end is most common in a sentence like this.

How does the sentence show that this is about this month and not the past or future? Where is the tense?

Malay does not mark tense with verb endings like English. There is no equivalent of -ed or will built into verbs or adjectives.

Instead, time is shown mainly through time expressions:

semalam – yesterday
esok – tomorrow
bulan lalu – last month
bulan depan – next month
bulan ini – this month

In Bil internet itu tinggi bulan ini, we know the time reference is this month from bulan ini. The adjective tinggi itself doesn’t change form for tense; it’s timeless and relies on context/time words.

Is the sentence formal, informal, or neutral? How might it sound in casual speech?

Bil internet itu tinggi bulan ini is neutral and perfectly acceptable in both spoken and written Malay.

In more casual everyday speech, you might hear:

Bil internet bulan ni tinggi.
Bil internet bulan ni mahal gila. (very informal: The internet bill is crazy expensive this month.)

Notes:

bulan ni is a colloquial contraction of bulan ini.
Dropping itu in casual speech is common when context is clear.

But your original sentence is good, natural, and safe in most contexts.

How would I turn this into a question: Is the internet bill high this month?

You have several options, depending on formality and style.

Neutral / slightly formal yes‑no question:
- Adakah bil internet itu tinggi bulan ini?
  (The particle adakah signals a yes‑no question.)
Spoken, with question intonation (very common):
- Bil internet itu tinggi bulan ini?
  Same words, but pronounced with rising intonation at the end, like English:
  The internet bill is high this month?
Colloquial:
- Bil internet bulan ni tinggi ke?
  ke is a common informal particle for questions.

All of these are understandable; the first is the most “textbook” version.

Your questions are stored by us to improve Elon.io