Breakdown of Guru tanya apa yang paling sukar tentang kerja rumah matematik minggu ini.
Questions & Answers about Guru tanya apa yang paling sukar tentang kerja rumah matematik minggu ini.
Malay verbs do not change form for tense. The verb tanya can mean ask / asked / is asking / will ask, depending on context.
- Guru tanya can be understood as:
- The teacher asks
- The teacher is asking
- The teacher asked
The time is usually shown by:
- Time expressions: semalam (yesterday), tadi (earlier), minggu lepas (last week), etc.
- Context of the conversation.
If you really want to make the past clear, you can add a time word, e.g.:
- Tadi guru tanya apa yang paling sukar… – Earlier the teacher asked what was the most difficult…
Both are correct, but there is a nuance in style and formality.
tanya
- Root / base verb.
- Very common in everyday speech and also acceptable in many written contexts.
- Guru tanya… sounds simple and neutral; in very formal writing it can feel a bit casual.
bertanya
- A derived verb with ber-, often a bit more formal or “complete”.
- Guru bertanya apa yang paling sukar… is perfectly correct and slightly more formal or bookish.
In conversation, Guru tanya… is very natural. In formal writing (essays, reports), Guru itu bertanya… might be preferred.
yang is very common after apa in this kind of structure, and it does two main jobs:
It links apa to the descriptive phrase that follows.
- apa yang paling sukar literally: what that is the most difficult
- The yang marks paling sukar as describing apa.
It makes the phrase sound more natural and complete.
- apa yang paling sukar → very natural, standard.
- apa paling sukar → possible in casual speech, but often sounds a bit “clipped” or incomplete.
So while you might hear apa paling sukar in fast, informal speech, apa yang paling sukar is the safest, most natural learner-friendly form.
apa yang paling sukar can be a direct question:
- Apa yang paling sukar tentang kerja rumah matematik minggu ini?
→ What is the most difficult thing about this week’s maths homework?
In your sentence, however, it is part of an indirect (reported) question:
- Guru tanya apa yang paling sukar…
→ The teacher asked what was the most difficult thing…
Because the whole sentence is a statement about what the teacher asked, it ends with a period, not a question mark. The “question” part is embedded inside the main clause.
All three can mean about, but they differ in formality and flavour:
tentang
- Neutral, common in both speech and writing.
- Fits perfectly here: tentang kerja rumah matematik minggu ini.
mengenai
- Slightly more formal / written.
- Guru tanya apa yang paling sukar mengenai kerja rumah matematik minggu ini.
- Also correct; sounds a bit more bookish.
pasal
- Informal, colloquial.
- Guru tanya apa yang paling sukar pasal kerja rumah matematik minggu ini.
- Very natural in casual spoken Malay, but not ideal for formal writing.
For learners, tentang is a safe default for about.
In most school-related contexts, kerja rumah is understood as homework.
However, literally it is house work, so context matters:
At school / in a classroom context:
- kerja rumah matematik → almost certainly math homework.
At home / in a family context, you might see:
- kerja rumah tangga → household chores, domestic work.
- kerja rumah on its own could be interpreted as chores, but native speakers often specify kerja rumah tangga or kerja rumah di rumah if they mean chores, to avoid confusion.
For talking about school tasks to do at home, kerja rumah (and also pekerjaan rumah or tugas rumah) are used for homework. Tugas rumah sounds a bit more formal / textbook-like.
Malay often puts descriptions after the noun in a kind of “stack”:
- Main noun: kerja
- Type: rumah → kerja rumah (homework)
- Subject / field: matematik → kerja rumah matematik (math homework)
- Time: minggu ini → kerja rumah matematik minggu ini (this week’s math homework)
So kerja rumah matematik minggu ini literally reads like:
> homework (of) mathematics (of) this week
You can say kerja rumah minggu ini untuk matematik, and it is understandable, but:
- kerja rumah matematik minggu ini is more compact and sounds more natural.
- untuk (for) is not needed when matematik is simply describing the type of homework.
Yes, you can add a possessive pronoun, but you must think about what exactly you’re modifying and how natural it sounds.
Some options:
kerja rumah matematik saya minggu ini
- my math homework this week
- Long but grammatical and clear.
kerja rumah matematik minggu ini
- Usually, context in a classroom already implies your / our homework, so the pronoun is often omitted in Malay.
Guru tanya apa yang paling sukar tentang kerja rumah matematik kamu minggu ini.
- The teacher asked what was most difficult about your math homework this week.
So yes, you can add saya / kami / kamu / mereka, but Malay tends to drop possessives when the owner is obvious from context.
sukar and susah are very close in meaning (difficult), but there are slight differences:
sukar
- A bit more formal or neutral.
- Common in written Malay, news, and more careful speech.
- Fits well in a teacher–student context.
susah
- More colloquial, very common in everyday speech.
- Often also carries a nuance of “troublesome” or “a hassle”.
In this sentence, both are acceptable:
- apa yang paling sukar – standard, neutral.
- apa yang paling susah – sounds a bit more casual / spoken.
As a learner, you can safely use either. If you want to sound slightly more formal or textbook-like, prefer sukar.
Yes, that sentence is correct and even more formal. The changes are:
Guru itu
- Adds itu (that) to specify that teacher / the teacher more clearly.
bertanya instead of tanya
- Slightly more formal, as explained earlier.
apakah instead of apa
- apakah is basically apa
- -kah, where -kah is a particle used in questions, especially in formal or written style.
- apakah yang paling sukar sounds more bookish and formal than apa yang paling sukar.
- apakah is basically apa
So:
Guru tanya apa yang paling sukar…
- Natural, everyday, neutral.
Guru itu bertanya apakah yang paling sukar…
- Very formal, suitable for essays, reports, or narrative writing with a more literary tone.