Learn Hardcore Malay: Dia kata bumbung lama itu rosak kerana hujan lebat minggu lalu menyebabkan sedikit banjir di atasnya. - He says that old roof is damaged because last week’s heavy rain caused a small flood on it.

Dia kata …
- Common and neutral in many contexts.
- Slightly more written/standard than cakap, but still very natural in speech.
Dia berkata …
- More formal and often found in written news, reports, official texts.
- In casual speech, people don’t use berkata as much.
Dia cakap …
- Very common in everyday spoken Malay (especially in Malaysia).
- Considered informal/colloquial.

You can usually swap them like this:

Dia kata bumbung lama itu rosak …
Dia berkata bahawa bumbung lama itu rosak … (more formal)
Dia cakap bumbung lama tu rosak … (colloquial)

In a textbook-style sentence, dia kata is fine and quite neutral.

In English we say “He said that the old roof …”. Where is the word “that” in Malay? Why isn’t it in the sentence?

Malay can use a word for “that” in this sense: bahawa.

Dia kata (bahawa) bumbung lama itu rosak …

However, bahawa is often dropped in everyday language, especially after verbs like:

kata (say)
berkata
beritahu (tell)
fikir (think)
rasa (feel)
tahu (know)

So:

Dia kata bumbung lama itu rosak …
- Literally: “He/She said the old roof was damaged …”
- Understood as: “He/She said that the old roof was damaged …”

Leaving out bahawa is normal and very common. Including it just makes the sentence a bit more formal or explicit.

How do I know if “dia” means “he” or “she” here?

You don’t, from this sentence alone.

In Malay:

dia = he / she
The pronoun doesn’t mark gender.

To show gender, Malay speakers usually rely on:

Context (who they were talking about before), or
Adding a noun like:
- lelaki (male, man)
- perempuan / wanita (female, woman)

For example:

Lelaki itu kata bumbung lama itu rosak …
“The man said the old roof was damaged …”
Dia, seorang wanita, kata …
“She, a woman, said …”

But if nothing is added, dia stays ambiguous: he or she.

Why is it “bumbung lama itu” and not “itu bumbung lama”? What is the natural word order?

Malay noun phrases usually follow this pattern:

[NOUN] + [ADJECTIVE] + [DEMONSTRATIVE (ini/itu)]

So:

bumbung = roof
lama = old
itu = that / the (that one)

Therefore:

bumbung lama itu ≈ “that old roof” / “the old roof”

Compare:

buku merah ini = “this red book”
kereta baru itu = “that new car”

“Itu bumbung lama” would sound more like a separate clause:

“That is an old roof” / “That old roof” (as a pointing-out sentence), not a simple noun phrase embedded in a longer sentence.

So in this sentence, bumbung lama itu is the normal noun phrase order.

What exactly does “itu” add in “bumbung lama itu”? Is it “the” or “that”? Can I omit it?

itu is a demonstrative meaning primarily “that”, but in real usage it often works like English “the (specific one)”.

In bumbung lama itu:

It suggests a particular old roof that both speaker and listener know about (e.g. that old roof we talked about).

If you remove it:

bumbung lama rosak
“An old roof is damaged” / “old roofs are damaged” (more general, less specific).

So:

bumbung lama itu = that/the specific old roof
bumbung lama (without itu) = “an old roof / old roofs” (more general, not clearly identified)

Whether you can omit it depends on whether you want to talk about a specific known roof (keep itu) or old roofs in general (omit itu).

Is “rosak” a verb (“was damaged”) or an adjective (“damaged”)? Why isn’t there a word like “was”?

rosak can function as both:

An adjective: “damaged, broken, ruined”
A stative verb: “to be damaged”

Malay often doesn’t separate “to be” and adjectives the way English does. Instead of saying:

“The roof was damaged.”

Malay can just say:

Bumbung itu rosak.
Literally: “That roof damaged/broken.”

There is no separate “to be” verb (is/was) in this kind of sentence.

If you really need to emphasize the past, you can add a time word or a marker:

Bumbung itu sudah rosak. = The roof is already damaged.
Bumbung itu telah rosak sejak minggu lalu. = The roof has been damaged since last week.

But in this sentence, the past meaning is understood from minggu lalu (“last week”), so just rosak is enough.

How do we know this is talking about the past if there’s no past tense ending? Where is “was” / “caused” (past)?

Malay doesn’t inflect verbs for tense (no -ed, -s, -ing). Instead, it relies on:

Time expressions
- minggu lalu = last week
- This tells us the event happened in the past.
Aspect markers (optional), like:
- sudah / telah = already
- akan = will
- sedang = in the process of

In your sentence:

hujan lebat minggu lalu = heavy rain last week
This automatically pushes the whole situation into the past, so:
- rosak is understood as “was damaged”
- menyebabkan is understood as “caused”

No extra past tense marker is needed.

What is the role of “kerana” here? Can I replace it with “sebab”?

kerana means “because”, introducing a reason clause.

In the sentence:

… rosak kerana hujan lebat minggu lalu menyebabkan …
“was damaged because last week’s heavy rain caused …”

You can usually replace kerana with sebab, but:

kerana
- More formal / neutral, common in writing and polite speech.
sebab
- Slightly more colloquial, especially in everyday spoken Malay.

So you could say:

… rosak sebab hujan lebat minggu lalu menyebabkan …

Grammatically it’s fine; the tone just becomes a bit more informal.

How does “menyebabkan sedikit banjir” work grammatically? What is “menyebabkan” doing?

menyebabkan comes from:

sebab = cause (noun)
Prefix meN-
- root sebab
  - suffix -kan
    ⇒ menyebabkan = “to cause” (verb)

The pattern is: > [Subject] + menyebabkan + [Effect]

In your sentence:

hujan lebat minggu lalu = subject (the cause)
menyebabkan = “caused”
sedikit banjir di atasnya = the effect (“a bit of flooding on it”)

So it literally means:

“Last week’s heavy rain caused a bit of flooding on it.”

Similar structures:

Kebocoran paip itu menyebabkan banjir di dapur.
“That pipe leak caused flooding in the kitchen.”
Kelewatan ini menyebabkan masalah besar.
“This delay caused a big problem.”

What does “sedikit banjir” mean literally? Is that how you normally say “a bit of flooding”?

Literally:

sedikit = a little, a bit, some
banjir = flood / flooding (noun, and also verb “to flood” in some contexts)

So sedikit banjir = “a bit of a flood” / “some flooding”.

This is a natural way to say “a small amount of flooding”. Other similar ways:

banjir kecil = a small flood
banjir ringan (less common, more descriptive) = light flooding
In spoken Malay: sikit banjir instead of sedikit banjir

But sedikit banjir is perfectly acceptable and clear.

What exactly does “di atasnya” mean? What does “-nya” refer to, and could we say “di atas bumbung itu” instead?

Breakdown:

di = at / in / on (preposition)
atas = top, above, on (location)
-nya = his/her/its/their (or “the” in some contexts), an attached pronoun

So:

di atasnya = “on it / on top of it”

Here, -nya refers back to bumbung lama itu (the old roof). So:

sedikit banjir di atasnya = “a bit of flooding on it (on the roof).”

Yes, you can absolutely say:

sedikit banjir di atas bumbung itu
- More explicit: “a bit of flooding on that roof.”

di atasnya is used to avoid repeating “bumbung itu” and keep the sentence shorter. Both are correct; the pronoun form is typical once the noun is already mentioned.

Also note:

You could sometimes hear atasnya without di in casual speech, but di atasnya is the standard form.

Is “hujan lebat minggu lalu” the normal order for “last week’s heavy rain”? Why not “minggu lalu hujan lebat”?

Both are possible, but they serve slightly different roles.

In your sentence, hujan lebat minggu lalu is a noun phrase:

hujan lebat = heavy rain
minggu lalu = last week
Together: “the heavy rain (of) last week”

So as one chunk:

hujan lebat minggu lalu menyebabkan …
= “(The) heavy rain last week caused …”
(Smooth and standard.)

If you say:

Minggu lalu, hujan lebat menyebabkan …
- Now minggu lalu is a time adverbial (“last week,”) at the beginning of the sentence.
- Roughly: “Last week, heavy rain caused …”

Both are grammatical. The original phrasing treats “last week’s heavy rain” as a single subject, which flows naturally in Malay.