Selepas bayar tol, kami singgah sebentar di stesen minyak.

After paying the toll, we stop for a while at a petrol station.

Breakdown of Selepas bayar tol, kami singgah sebentar di stesen minyak.

• di: at
• selepas: after
• sebentar: for a while
• kami: we
• bayar: to pay
• tol: the toll
• singgah: to stop by
• stesen minyak: the petrol station

Questions & Answers about Selepas bayar tol, kami singgah sebentar di stesen minyak.

In Selepas bayar tol, why is it bayar and not membayar?

Bayar is the base verb “to pay”. Membayar is the more formal, affixed form of the same verb.

In everyday Malay, especially in speech and in less formal writing, it’s very common to use the base form of the verb after time words like selepas (after), sebelum (before), kalau (if), etc.:

• Selepas bayar tol…
• Sebelum makan, basuh tangan. – Before eating, wash your hands.

A more formal version of the sentence would be:

• Selepas membayar tol, kami singgah sebentar di stesen minyak.

Both are grammatically fine; membayar just sounds more formal or written, while bayar is more neutral/colloquial.

There’s no subject in Selepas bayar tol. How do we know who is paying?

The subject kami (we) is understood to be the subject of both clauses:

• Selepas (kami) bayar tol, kami singgah sebentar di stesen minyak.

Malay often omits the subject in a dependent clause when it’s the same as the subject of the main clause. A fully “spelled out” version would be:

• Selepas kami bayar tol, kami singgah sebentar di stesen minyak.
• Selepas kami membayar tol, kami singgah sebentar di stesen minyak. (more formal)

Leaving out kami in the selepas clause is natural and very common.

What’s the difference between selepas, lepas, and sesudah?

All three mean “after”, but they differ in formality and typical use:

• Selepas

  • Standard, neutral Malay.
  • Common in both speech and writing.
  • Works in almost any context.

• Lepas

  • Shortened, more informal/colloquial version of selepas.
  • Extremely common in everyday speech:
    
    • Lepas bayar tol, kami singgah…

• Sesudah

  • More formal or literary.
  • Common in older texts, official writing, or religious contexts.
  • You could say: Sesudah membayar tol, kami singgah… but this sounds more formal.

In most modern everyday Malay, selepas or lepas are preferred.

Why is it kami and not kita here?

Malay distinguishes between two kinds of “we”:

• kami – exclusive we (the speaker + some others, but not the listener)
• kita – inclusive we (the speaker + the listener + possibly others)

In Selepas bayar tol, kami singgah sebentar di stesen minyak, the speaker is talking about their own group, not including the person they’re speaking to. That’s why kami is used.

If the listener was also in the car, you would naturally say:

• Selepas bayar tol, kita singgah sebentar di stesen minyak.
  – “After paying the toll, we (you and I) stopped briefly at the petrol station.”

What exactly does singgah mean? How is it different from berhenti?

Singgah means to stop by / to drop in somewhere briefly, usually on the way to another place. It implies:

• a short stop
• at some place that is not your final destination
• often with a small purpose (to buy something, use the toilet, visit someone quickly)

Berhenti simply means “to stop” (to cease moving or doing something):

• Kereta itu berhenti. – The car stopped.
• Saya berhenti kerja. – I quit my job.

So:

• Kami singgah sebentar di stesen minyak.
  – We stopped by the petrol station (on the way somewhere else).

• Kereta kami berhenti di stesen minyak.
  – Our car stopped at the petrol station. (Just stating that it stopped there; no nuance of “drop by” or “visit”.)

In this sentence, singgah is ideal because it describes a quick, intentional stop on the way.

If singgah already implies a short stop, why add sebentar? Isn’t that redundant?

You’re right that singgah already suggests a brief stop, but sebentar (“for a short while”) adds:

• emphasis: it really was quick
• a natural collocation: singgah sebentar is a very common, idiomatic pairing

Similar to English:

• “We just stopped by for a bit.”
• “We stopped briefly.”

So singgah sebentar feels idiomatic and natural, not awkwardly repetitive. You can say just singgah di stesen minyak, but singgah sebentar sounds very typical and friendly.

Why is it di stesen minyak and not ke stesen minyak?

In Malay:

• di = at / in / on (location)
• ke = to / towards (movement, direction)

In this sentence, the focus is on where they stopped (the location), not the movement towards it:

• kami singgah sebentar di stesen minyak
  – we stopped briefly at the petrol station.

If you want to emphasize the movement, you could say:

• Selepas bayar tol, kami pergi ke stesen minyak.
  – After paying the toll, we went to the petrol station.

But once the verb is singgah (stop by), you normally use di to mark the place where you stop.

Does stesen minyak literally mean “oil station”? Is this really how you say “gas/petrol station” in Malay?

Yes. Literally:

• stesen = station (from English “station”)
• minyak = oil, but in this context, fuel (petrol/gas)

So stesen minyak is the standard Malaysian Malay term for a petrol station / gas station.

Some notes:

• In Malaysia, stesen minyak is very common and natural.
• You might also hear stesen petrol, but stesen minyak is more general and widely used.
• In Indonesian, the common term is different: pom bensin or SPBU, not stesen minyak.

So for Malaysian Malay, stesen minyak is the normal phrase.

There’s no past tense marker. How do we know this sentence is in the past?

Malay doesn’t change the verb form for tense. Instead, it uses:

• time expressions (semalam, tadi, nanti, etc.)
• context
• conjunctions like selepas (after), sebelum (before) which inherently relate events in time

In Selepas bayar tol, kami singgah sebentar di stesen minyak, selepas already tells you the order of events. In a typical narrative context, this will be understood as past.

If you want to be very explicit that it’s past, you can add sudah or tadi:

• Selepas kami bayar tol tadi, kami sudah singgah sebentar di stesen minyak.

But in most cases, the simple original sentence is enough; Malay relies heavily on context rather than verb tense endings.

Can I move Selepas bayar tol to the end of the sentence?

Yes. Both orders are possible:

1. Selepas bayar tol, kami singgah sebentar di stesen minyak.
   – Time clause first, then main clause.

2. Kami singgah sebentar di stesen minyak selepas bayar tol.
   – Main clause first, then time clause.

This flexibility is normal. Putting Selepas bayar tol at the beginning slightly emphasizes the sequence/time frame. At the end, it feels a bit more like background information. Both are natural.

Malay doesn’t have “the” or “a” here. Is tol “the toll” or “a toll”? Is stesen minyak “the petrol station” or “a petrol station”?

Malay doesn’t use articles like English “a” or “the”. Tol and stesen minyak are bare nouns, and their definiteness comes from context.

In this context, a natural English translation would be:

• “After paying the toll, we stopped briefly at a petrol station.”

Why?

• tol – on a highway you typically pay the toll at the toll booth you encounter, so English naturally uses the.
• stesen minyak – you’re not talking about a specific, previously identified station, just any convenient one on the way, so English naturally uses a.

If Malay speakers want to be explicit, they can add:

• tol itu – that toll
• stesen minyak itu – that petrol station / the petrol station (already known)

But in many cases, bare nouns like in the original sentence are enough, and the listener figures out “the” or “a” from context.