Learn Hardcore Malay: Ayah sedang membaiki kereta rosak di halaman. - Father is repairing the broken car in the yard.

Malay generally does not use articles like “the” or “a/an”. Whether the noun is definite (the) or indefinite (a/an) is understood from context.

So:

Ayah → can mean “Father”, “Dad”, “my father”, or “a father”, depending on context.
kereta rosak → can mean “the broken car” or “a broken car”.

If you really need to be explicit, Malay can add other words:

sebuah kereta rosak – a (single) broken car
kereta rosak itu – that / the broken car

But in ordinary sentences, articles are simply not used, and listeners infer the meaning from context.

Does “Ayah” here mean “my father” or just “a father”? And why don’t we say “ayah saya”?

On its own, Ayah literally means “father” or “dad”, but:

In real conversations, when a speaker says Ayah as the subject, it almost always means “my father / my dad”, unless the context clearly shows we are talking about someone else’s father.
If you want to be explicit, you can say Ayah saya sedang membaiki kereta rosak di halaman – “My father is repairing the broken car in the yard.”

So:

Ayah sedang membaiki… – normally understood as My dad is repairing…
Seorang ayah sedang membaiki… – A father is repairing… (introducing some random father, not necessarily yours)
Ayah Ali sedang membaiki… – Ali’s father is repairing…

Using just Ayah is very natural when you are talking about your own father.

What does “sedang” mean, and can we leave it out?

sedang marks an action that is in progress right now, similar to English “is doing / is currently doing”.

Ayah membaiki kereta rosak di halaman.
→ Father repairs / is repairing the broken car in the yard. (tense depends on context)
Ayah sedang membaiki kereta rosak di halaman.
→ Father is (currently) repairing the broken car in the yard.

So:

Meaning of sedang: indicates the progressive aspect (ongoing activity).
Can it be omitted? Yes. If you omit it, the verb becomes more neutral in time and the exact tense is inferred from context or time words like tadi (earlier), sekarang (now), besok (tomorrow), etc.

Example:

Tadi ayah membaiki kereta rosak di halaman.
→ Earlier, Dad was repairing / repaired the broken car in the yard. (no sedang, but tadi tells us it’s past)

Why is the verb “membaiki” and not “baik” or “membaik”?

The base word here is baik, which usually means “good / well”, but when used with affixes it can form a verb meaning “to repair / to fix”.

baik – good (adjective)
membaiki – to repair, to fix

This form uses the meN- … -i pattern:

meN- prefix + root + -i suffix → often means “to do something to [object]”

So:

membaiki kereta – to repair a car
mengisi borang (isi → fill) – to fill in a form

membaik on its own is not standard; the natural form is membaiki.

What’s the difference between “membaiki”, “memperbaiki”, and “membaik pulih”?

They all relate to repairing / improving, but with different flavours:

membaiki
- Everyday, neutral word for repairing / fixing something broken.
- Ayah sedang membaiki kereta rosak.
  → Dad is repairing the broken car.
memperbaiki
- Often means “to improve / to make better”, not only literal repairs.
- Common for abstract things (behaviour, system, relationship):
  - memperbaiki sikap – to improve one’s attitude
  - memperbaiki prestasi – to improve performance
- In Indonesian, memperbaiki is more common for repair; in Malaysian usage, membaiki is more ordinary for cars, machines, etc.
membaik pulih
- Literally “to repair-and-restore”; used when something is seriously damaged and needs major restoration.
- Often for buildings, systems, infrastructure:
  - membaik pulih bangunan lama – restore an old building
- Using membaik pulih kereta is possible, but it sounds like a major overhaul rather than a simple repair.

In your sentence, membaiki is the most natural and neutral choice.

Why is it “kereta rosak” and not “rosak kereta”? Why does the adjective come after the noun?

In Malay, adjectives usually come after the noun they describe.

kereta rosak – literally car broken → broken car
rumah besar – literally house big → big house
buku baru – literally book new → new book

Putting the adjective before the noun (e.g. rosak kereta) is not grammatical in standard Malay. So:

kereta rosak – correct
rosak kereta – wrong as a noun phrase (it could appear across a verb–object boundary in other contexts, but not as “broken car”)

The normal pattern is: NOUN + ADJECTIVE.

Why is it “kereta rosak” and not “kereta yang rosak”? What’s the difference?

Both are correct but slightly different in nuance:

kereta rosak
- Simple noun + adjective: broken car.
- Describes a general quality: a car that is broken.
kereta yang rosak
- Literally: the car that is broken.
- yang turns the rest (rosak) into a kind of relative clause.
- Often used when you are distinguishing one specific car from others.

Example nuance:

Ayah sedang membaiki kereta rosak di halaman.
→ Dad is repairing a broken car in the yard. (describing the car as broken)
Ayah sedang membaiki kereta yang rosak di halaman.
→ Dad is repairing the car that is broken in the yard.
(implies that particular one which is broken, maybe out of several cars)

In everyday speech, kereta rosak is perfectly natural if there is only one car in question.

Why is there no word like “one” or a classifier (e.g. “sebuah”) before “kereta rosak”?

Malay does use classifiers like buah, orang, ekor, but they are not mandatory in every noun phrase.

sebuah kereta rosak – a (one) broken car
seekor kucing hitam – a black cat
seorang budak lelaki – a (male) child / boy

In your sentence, kereta rosak without a classifier is perfectly normal. Classifiers are more likely when you:

Emphasize number:
- Ayah membaiki tiga buah kereta rosak. – Dad is repairing three broken cars.
Introduce something new or countable more explicitly:
- Ada sebuah kereta rosak di halaman. – There is a broken car in the yard.

Without a classifier, kereta rosak can still mean “a broken car” or “the broken car”, depending on context.

What exactly does “halaman” mean here? Is it “yard”, “garden”, or something else?

halaman most often means “yard / compound / grounds (of a house)”.

In this sentence:

di halaman → in the yard / in the compound (of the house)

Some nuances:

halaman rumah – the yard/grounds of a house
halaman depan – front yard
halaman belakang – backyard

Note: halaman can also mean “page” (of a book/website), but in this sentence the meaning is clearly yard/compound because it’s where a car is being repaired.

So Ayah sedang membaiki kereta rosak di halaman. → Dad is repairing the broken car out in the yard / in the front area of the house.

What does “di” do in “di halaman”? Is it like “in”, “at”, or “on”?

di is a location preposition. It is quite broad and can correspond to “in”, “at”, or “on”, depending on context.

di rumah – at home / in the house
di sekolah – at school
di halaman – in the yard / at the yard / in the compound
di meja – on the table

Malay doesn’t make as many fine distinctions between in/at/on as English does; di covers all of them. The correct English preposition is chosen by natural English usage, not by a 1-to-1 mapping from Malay.

Is the word order fixed? Can we move “di halaman” to the front of the sentence?

The basic neutral word order is:

Subject – Aspect – Verb – Object – Place
Ayah – sedang – membaiki – kereta rosak – di halaman.

You can move di halaman to the front to emphasize the location:

Di halaman, ayah sedang membaiki kereta rosak.
→ In the yard, Dad is repairing a broken car.

This is still correct. The meaning is the same, but the focus slightly shifts:

Original: more neutral; just stating what Dad is doing and where.
Fronted di halaman: highlights the location (maybe contrasting with other places).

So the typical order is as given, but fronting location phrases is fine and common for emphasis.

How would I say this sentence in the past or future in Malay?

Malay verbs do not change form for tense. You keep membaiki, and you add time words (and optionally aspect markers like sedang).

Present (ongoing) – your original sentence
- Ayah sedang membaiki kereta rosak di halaman.
  → Dad is (currently) repairing the broken car in the yard.
Past (completed or earlier ongoing)
- Tadi ayah membaiki kereta rosak di halaman.
  → Earlier, Dad was repairing / repaired the broken car in the yard.
- Semalam ayah membaiki kereta rosak di halaman.
  → Yesterday Dad repaired the broken car in the yard.
Future
- Nanti ayah akan membaiki kereta rosak di halaman.
  → Later, Dad will repair the broken car in the yard.
- Esok ayah akan membaiki kereta rosak di halaman.
  → Tomorrow, Dad will repair the broken car in the yard.

Notice: membaiki never changes form; time is shown by words like tadi, semalam, nanti, esok and akan (will).

Is this sentence the same in Indonesian, or are there differences?

It’s very close, but there are some typical differences between Standard Malay (Malaysia) and Standard Indonesian.

Malay (Malaysia):

Ayah sedang membaiki kereta rosak di halaman.

Indonesian (typical version):

Ayah sedang memperbaiki mobil yang rusak di halaman.

Main differences:

kereta (Malay) vs mobil (Indonesian) – both mean car.
membaiki (Malay) vs memperbaiki (more common in Indonesian for “repair”).
kereta rosak (Malay) vs mobil yang rusak (Indonesian often uses yang here, though mobil rusak is also possible).

If you’re learning Malay in a Malaysian context, your original sentence is natural and correct.