Breakdown of Untuk ke majlis perkahwinan sepupu, kami melalui lebuh raya yang sibuk.
Questions & Answers about Untuk ke majlis perkahwinan sepupu, kami melalui lebuh raya yang sibuk.
Untuk adds the idea of purpose: untuk ke ≈ in order to go to / for going to.
- Untuk ke majlis perkahwinan sepupu, kami...
= In order to go to my cousin’s wedding, we...
If you say:
- Ke majlis perkahwinan sepupu, kami melalui lebuh raya...
it sounds odd and incomplete in Malay. Starting a sentence with Ke ... , kami ... is not a natural way to express purpose. You either:
Keep the original structure with untuk:
- Untuk ke majlis perkahwinan sepupu, kami melalui lebuh raya yang sibuk.
Or put the purpose at the end:
- Kami melalui lebuh raya yang sibuk untuk ke majlis perkahwinan sepupu.
Both are natural; untuk is needed to show the idea “for the purpose of going (there)”.
Literally, majlis perkahwinan sepupu breaks down as:
- majlis = ceremony / event / function
- perkahwinan = wedding / marriage (the event)
- sepupu = cousin
So the phrase is “cousin’s wedding ceremony”.
Malay often shows possession just by putting nouns next to each other, in order:
[thing possessed] + [possessor]
majlis perkahwinan + sepupu
= the cousin’s wedding ceremony
Unlike English, there’s no ’s and often no explicit word for of.
If you want to be clearer that it’s my cousin, you can say:
- majlis perkahwinan sepupu saya = my cousin’s wedding ceremony
- majlis perkahwinan sepupu kami = our cousin’s wedding ceremony
The original sentence just assumes the context already makes it clear whose cousin it is.
Sepupu simply means cousin, without specifying:
- gender (male/female)
- age (older/younger)
- which side of the family (mother’s/father’s)
If you need to be specific, you add extra words:
- sepupu lelaki = male cousin
- sepupu perempuan = female cousin
- sepupu sebelah ibu = cousin on my mother’s side
- sepupu sebelah bapa = cousin on my father’s side
But normally, sepupu alone is enough, just like “cousin” in English.
In this sentence:
- melalui lebuh raya yang sibuk ≈ (we) went via / passed along / used the busy highway
melalui literally means to go through / pass through / go along (a route). It focuses on the path/route.
Compare with:
- guna / menggunakan lebuh raya = use the highway
- ambil lebuh raya (colloquial) = take the highway (choose that route)
- lepas lebuh raya = go past the highway (pass by it, not necessarily traveling along it)
Here, melalui lebuh raya is natural and neutral: it just says which path you took.
- lebuh raya = highway / expressway (major high-speed road, often with tolls)
- jalan raya = main road / public road (can be big or small, not necessarily a highway)
So:
- lebuh raya yang sibuk ≈ a busy highway
- jalan raya yang sibuk ≈ a busy (main) road
You may also see lebuhraya written as one word; lebuh raya (two words) is more standard.
yang in this sentence introduces a describing clause (a relative clause) for lebuh raya:
- lebuh raya yang sibuk = the highway that is busy / the busy highway
Structure:
[noun] + yang + [description]
lebuh raya + yang + sibuk
yang links the noun to its description. You cannot normally say:
- ✗ lebuh raya sibuk (this sounds off in standard Malay)
You need yang:
- lebuh raya yang sibuk = grammatically correct
So yang here works like “that/which” or like a linker before an adjective clause.
Both mean we, but:
- kami = we (not including the person being spoken to)
- kita = we (including the listener)
In this sentence:
- kami melalui lebuh raya yang sibuk
implies the speaker is talking about their own group only, not including the listener.
Use kami when the listener was not part of the group going to the wedding.
Use kita only if you’re talking to someone who was also there:
- Untuk ke majlis perkahwinan sepupu, kita melalui lebuh raya yang sibuk.
= For my/our cousin’s wedding, we (you and I) took the busy highway.
Yes, you can change the word order:
- Untuk ke majlis perkahwinan sepupu, kami melalui lebuh raya yang sibuk.
- Kami melalui lebuh raya yang sibuk untuk ke majlis perkahwinan sepupu.
Both are natural.
Differences in feel:
- Starting with Untuk ke majlis... puts slight emphasis on the purpose first.
- Starting with Kami... is more neutral and direct, like normal English word order.
The comma in the original marks Untuk ke majlis perkahwinan sepupu as a fronted purpose phrase.
Malay does not change the verb form for tense the way English does. Time is usually understood from:
- context
- time words (yesterday, tomorrow, already, etc.)
In this sentence, the action is understood as past because it’s talking about a specific event (the cousin’s wedding), usually something already done.
If you want to be explicit, you can add time markers:
- Semalam, untuk ke majlis perkahwinan sepupu, kami melalui lebuh raya yang sibuk.
= Yesterday, for my cousin’s wedding, we went via the busy highway.
The verb melalui itself doesn’t change form for past, present, or future.
They come from the same root:
- kahwin = to marry / get married (verb), also “married” in some contexts
- perkahwinan = marriage / wedding (the event or state), a noun
Word formation:
- per- + kahwin + -an → perkahwinan
Examples:
Mereka akan kahwin bulan depan.
They will get married next month.Majlis perkahwinan mereka sangat meriah.
Their wedding ceremony was very lively.
So in majlis perkahwinan, perkahwinan is the noun “wedding (event)”.
Yes, both are correct, with a small nuance difference:
untuk ke majlis perkahwinan sepupu
= to go to my cousin’s wedding (focus on going there / going to the place)untuk menghadiri majlis perkahwinan sepupu
= to attend my cousin’s wedding (focus on attending/being present at the event)
So:
Untuk ke majlis perkahwinan sepupu, kami melalui lebuh raya yang sibuk.
= We took the busy highway in order to go to the wedding.Untuk menghadiri majlis perkahwinan sepupu, kami melalui lebuh raya yang sibuk.
= We took the busy highway in order to attend the wedding.
In everyday speech, untuk ke is simpler and more common; menghadiri sounds a bit more formal.