Learn Hardcore Malay: Adik saya bersin kuat ketika habuk di bilik belum dibersihkan. - My younger sibling sneezes loudly when the dust in the room has not yet been cleaned.

If you just say sibling in a neutral way (without older/younger), Malay normally doesn’t use a single generic word; you choose based on age relative to the speaker. That’s why adik automatically implies “younger.”

Why is it adik saya and not saya adik for “my younger sibling”?

Malay usually puts the possessed thing first, then the possessor:

adik saya – my younger sibling
buku saya – my book
kereta dia – his/her car

So the pattern is:
[noun] + [possessor pronoun]

Saya adik would mean something like I am a younger sibling, not my younger sibling. For “my younger sibling,” you must say adik saya.

What exactly does bersin kuat mean? Why is kuat (“strong”) used for a sneeze?

bersin = to sneeze
kuat = strong; when used with sounds, it often means loud(ly)

So bersin kuat means to sneeze loudly or to sneeze hard.

Malay often uses kuat to describe sounds that are loud or intense:

batuk kuat – cough loudly
ketawa kuat – laugh loudly
hujan kuat – heavy rain (raining hard)

You could also say bersin dengan kuat, but bersin kuat is shorter and very natural.

What is the role of ketika here? Is it the same as “when”? Can I use apabila or semasa instead?

In ketika habuk di bilik belum dibersihkan, the word ketika introduces a time clause:

ketika ≈ when / at the time when

So the whole sentence is:
Adik saya bersin kuat ketika habuk di bilik belum dibersihkan.
= My younger sibling sneezed loudly when the dust in the room had not yet been cleaned.

You can usually replace ketika with:

apabila – when (more conditional / more neutral)
semasa – while / during / when (emphasizes “during that period”)

In this sentence:

ketika / apabila / semasa habuk di bilik belum dibersihkan

All three are grammatically acceptable. Ketika and semasa feel a bit more “written” or formal than apabila in many contexts, but here the difference is small.

How do we know this sentence is in the past? There is no word like “did” or “had.”

Malay normally does not mark tense with verb changes. Time is understood from:

Context, and
Time words, if needed (like yesterday, already, tomorrow).

In Adik saya bersin kuat ketika habuk di bilik belum dibersihkan, we interpret it as past because:

The situation sounds like a one‑time, completed event (someone sneezed because of dust).
belum (not yet) suggests a comparison between “before cleaning” and (implied) “after cleaning.”

If you want to make the past time very explicit, you can add a time expression:

Tadi adik saya bersin kuat ketika habuk di bilik belum dibersihkan.
Earlier, my younger sibling sneezed loudly when the dust in the room had not yet been cleaned.

The verb bersin itself doesn’t change for past, present, or future.

What does belum add here, compared to tidak? Could we say habuk di bilik tidak dibersihkan?

belum = not yet (implies that it may or will happen later)
tidak = not (no “yet” feeling, just plain negation)

In the sentence:

habuk di bilik belum dibersihkan
= the dust in the room has not yet been cleaned

This suggests that cleaning is expected or planned, just not done at that moment.

If you said:

habuk di bilik tidak dibersihkan
= the dust in the room is not cleaned / is never cleaned

That sounds like a habitual or ongoing situation: they simply don’t clean it. Very different nuance, and doesn’t fit as naturally with a one‑off sneeze event.

So belum is the appropriate choice for “had not yet been cleaned.”

How is dibersihkan formed, and why is it in this passive form?

dibersihkan comes from:

bersih – clean (adjective)
add -kan to make a causative verb: bersihkan – to clean / to make clean
add di- to make a passive form: dibersihkan – to be cleaned

So habuk di bilik belum dibersihkan literally is:

the dust in the room has not yet been cleaned

This is a passive construction: we focus on the dust (what happened to it), not on who is doing the cleaning. This is very typical in Malay when the doer is unknown, unimportant, or obvious from context.

An active version would be:

Saya belum membersihkan habuk di bilik.
I have not yet cleaned the dust in the room.

Here saya (I) is the doer, and membersihkan is the active verb form.

In habuk di bilik, what is the function of di bilik? Is it like “in the room” or “of the room”?

habuk – dust
di bilik – in the room

So habuk di bilik = the dust in the room.

di is a preposition meaning at / in / on (location). It does not show possession by itself. The phrase is understood as “the dust that is located in the room,” not “the room’s dust” in a strict grammatical sense, though in natural English we might say “the room’s dust.”

You could also say:

habuk dalam bilik – dust inside the room (slightly more explicit about being inside)

But di bilik is already normal and idiomatic.

Could the sentence order be reversed, like Ketika habuk di bilik belum dibersihkan, adik saya bersin kuat?

Yes, that is perfectly correct and natural:

Ketika habuk di bilik belum dibersihkan, adik saya bersin kuat.

Malay allows time clauses (with ketika, apabila, semasa, etc.) to appear:

either after the main clause:
Adik saya bersin kuat ketika habuk di bilik belum dibersihkan.
or before the main clause:
Ketika habuk di bilik belum dibersihkan, adik saya bersin kuat.

The meaning is the same: it just changes which part you foreground in the sentence.

Is di bilik different from di dalam bilik? Could we say ketika habuk di dalam bilik belum dibersihkan?

di bilik – in/at the room (very common, neutral)
di dalam bilik – literally in inside the room, more explicit about being inside

You can say:

ketika habuk di dalam bilik belum dibersihkan

This is correct and may sound slightly more descriptive, but in most everyday situations di bilik is enough and more streamlined. The choice is often stylistic; there is no big grammatical difference here.

Does habuk always mean “dust,” or can it mean “dirt” more generally?

habuk primarily means dust – fine particles, like:

dust on furniture
dust in the air that makes you sneeze

For “dirt” in a broader sense (mud, soil, grime), Malay more often uses:

kotoran – dirt, filth, impurities
lumpur – mud
tanah – soil / earth (not “dirt” in the “unclean” sense)

So in this sentence, habuk is specifically the kind of dust that can irritate your nose and cause sneezing.