Nombor telefon kecemasan ditampal di sebelah telefon pejabat.

The emergency phone number is stuck next to the office phone.

Breakdown of Nombor telefon kecemasan ditampal di sebelah telefon pejabat.

• pejabat: office
• telefon: the phone
• di sebelah: next to
• kecemasan: emergency
• nombor telefon: the phone number
• ditampal: to be stuck

Questions & Answers about Nombor telefon kecemasan ditampal di sebelah telefon pejabat.

What does each word in Nombor telefon kecemasan ditampal di sebelah telefon pejabat literally mean?

Word-by-word:

• nombor = number
• telefon = telephone / phone
• kecemasan = emergency
• ditampal = is pasted / was pasted / is stuck (passive form of tampal “to paste, to stick on”)
• di = at / in / on (location preposition)
• sebelah = side, next to
• telefon = telephone / phone
• pejabat = office

Natural English: “The emergency phone number is pasted next to the office phone.”

Why is kecemasan at the end of nombor telefon kecemasan instead of at the beginning, like in English “emergency phone number”?

In Malay, most modifiers come after the word they describe.

The structure is:

• nombor (head noun: number)
• telefon (modifies nombor: phone number)
• kecemasan (modifies telefon: emergency phone)

So it builds up from left to right:

1. telefon = phone
2. telefon kecemasan = emergency phone
3. nombor telefon kecemasan = the number of the emergency phone → emergency phone number

Putting kecemasan at the front (kecemasan nombor telefon) would sound wrong in Malay. The natural order is noun + modifiers.

What exactly is ditampal grammatically, and how is it different from tampal or menampal?

• tampal

  • Root verb: to paste, to stick (something onto a surface).
  • Often used as a bare verb in casual speech:
    
    • Dia tampal kertas itu di dinding. = He/She pasted the paper on the wall.

• menampal

  • Active transitive form (with meN- prefix): “to paste [something]”.
  • Standard/neutral:
    
    • Mereka menampal nombor telefon kecemasan di sebelah telefon pejabat.
      = They pasted the emergency phone number next to the office phone.

• ditampal

  • Passive form (with di- prefix): “is pasted / was pasted / got pasted”.
  • The agent (who did it) is not mentioned:
    
    • Nombor telefon kecemasan ditampal di sebelah telefon pejabat.
      = The emergency phone number is/was pasted next to the office phone.

So:

• menampal focuses on the doer.
• ditampal focuses on the thing affected (the number), not on who did it.

Why does this sentence use the passive ditampal instead of an active form?

Malay often prefers the passive when:

• The doer is unknown, unimportant, or obvious from context.
• The focus is on the object (here, the emergency number) and its state/location.

Compare:

• Passive (original)
  Nombor telefon kecemasan ditampal di sebelah telefon pejabat.
  → Focus: the number and where it is.

• Active
  Mereka menampal nombor telefon kecemasan di sebelah telefon pejabat.
  → They pasted the emergency phone number next to the office phone.

The passive sounds natural here because who pasted it doesn’t really matter; the important information is where the number is.

What does di sebelah mean exactly? Can I just say sebelah on its own?

• sebelah on its own literally means:

  • “side” (di sebelah kiri = on the left side)
  • or “one of two” (sebelah kasut = one shoe / one side of a pair).

• With the preposition di:

  • di sebelah = at the side (of), next to, beside

In your sentence:

• di sebelah telefon pejabat = next to the office phone / at the side of the office phone.

In standard Malay, you generally keep the di:

• ditampal di sebelah telefon pejabat (correct standard)

In casual speech, you might hear people drop it:

• tampal sebelah telefon pejabat
  but that’s more colloquial and less formal.

So for proper usage, keep di: di sebelah.

Does telefon pejabat mean “office phone” or “phone office”? How do Malay noun combinations like this work?

telefon pejabat is best translated as “office phone”.

Pattern: [main noun] + [modifier noun]

• telefon = phone (main noun)
• pejabat = office (modifier noun)
• telefon pejabat = the phone belonging to/used in the office → “office phone”

If you said pejabat telefon, it would suggest “telephone office” (e.g. a telecommunications office or department), which is a different thing.

So:

• telefon pejabat = office phone
• telefon rumah = home phone
• telefon bimbit = mobile phone (literally “portable phone”)

How would I make “emergency phone numbers” plural in Malay?

You can mark the plural explicitly by reduplication of the noun:

• nombor-nombor telefon kecemasan
  = emergency phone numbers

So the full sentence could be:

• Nombor-nombor telefon kecemasan ditampal di sebelah telefon pejabat.
  = The emergency phone numbers are pasted next to the office phone.

However, Malay often leaves plurals unmarked and relies on context. So:

• Nombor telefon kecemasan ditampal di sebelah telefon pejabat.

can mean either:

• “The emergency phone number is pasted …” (one number), or
• “The emergency phone numbers are pasted …” (several numbers).

Context decides which is intended.

Can I say Nombor kecemasan ditampal di sebelah telefon pejabat and drop the word telefon? Is that still correct?

Yes, that is still grammatically correct:

• Nombor kecemasan = emergency number(s)

Differences in nuance:

• nombor telefon kecemasan
  Emphasises that it’s specifically a telephone number used for emergencies.

• nombor kecemasan
  More general: “emergency number”. Still usually understood as a phone number, but could be slightly broader in some contexts.

In everyday usage, people often say nombor kecemasan and everyone understands they mean emergency phone numbers (police, ambulance, fire department, etc.).

Is kecemasan a noun (“emergency”) or an adjective (“emergency”) here?

Formally, kecemasan is a noun formed from the root cemas (anxious) with the circumfix ke-…-an:

• cemas (anxious) → kecemasan (emergency)

But in combinations like telefon kecemasan, it functions like an adjectival modifier:

• kecemasan describes the type of phone: emergency phone
• telefon kecemasan → emergency phone
• nombor telefon kecemasan → emergency phone number

Malay doesn’t always sharply separate nouns and adjectives the way English does; many nouns can function as modifiers.

Why is there no word for “the” or “is” in this sentence? How do we know it means “THE emergency phone number is pasted …”?

1. No “the” / “a/an” in Malay

Malay does not have direct equivalents of English “the” or “a/an”. Definiteness is usually understood from context.

• Nombor telefon kecemasan ditampal …
  can mean “an emergency phone number” or “the emergency phone number” depending on what makes sense in context.

If you really want to emphasise “the”, you can add itu (“that”):

• Nombor telefon kecemasan itu ditampal di sebelah telefon pejabat.
  = That / the emergency phone number is pasted next to the office phone.

2. No separate “is”

Here, ditampal already carries the idea of “is/was pasted”, so you don’t need a separate “is”:

• English: The number *is pasted …*
• Malay: Nombor telefon kecemasan *ditampal …*

The verb itself covers both the action and the state; tense (is/was) is taken from context.

How do we know if ditampal means “is pasted” or “was pasted”? There’s no tense marker.

Malay verbs usually don’t mark tense (past/present/future). Time is understood from context or from time words like sudah (already), akan (will), tadi (earlier), esok (tomorrow), etc.

So:

• Nombor telefon kecemasan ditampal di sebelah telefon pejabat. can be:
  • “The emergency phone number is pasted next to the office phone.” (describing a current state)
  • “The emergency phone number was pasted next to the office phone.” (telling a past event)

If you need to make it explicit:

• Past-ish:
  Nombor telefon kecemasan sudah ditampal di sebelah telefon pejabat.
  = The emergency phone number has already been pasted …

• Future-ish:
  Nombor telefon kecemasan akan ditampal di sebelah telefon pejabat.
  = The emergency phone number will be pasted …

How might this sentence sound in more casual, spoken Malay?

Some common colloquial variations:

1. Active, with informal pronoun and “kat”

   • Diorang tampal nombor telefon kecemasan kat sebelah telefon pejabat.
     = They pasted the emergency phone number next to the office phone.
   • Features:
     • diorang = they (informal)
     • kat = at / in / on (informal for di)

2. Subjectless style (very colloquial)

   • Nombor telefon kecemasan tampal je kat sebelah telefon pejabat.
   • Literally: “Emergency phone number just paste at the side of the office phone.”
   • Very spoken, not for formal writing.

The original sentence:

• Nombor telefon kecemasan ditampal di sebelah telefon pejabat.
  is appropriate for formal or neutral written Malay.