Breakdown of Di kalangan pelajar universiti, ramai suka belajar di perpustakaan.
Questions & Answers about Di kalangan pelajar universiti, ramai suka belajar di perpustakaan.
Di kalangan literally means “in the group of / among”.
- Di = at / in (a location or context)
- Kalangan = group / circle (of people)
So di kalangan pelajar universiti = among university students or within the group of university students.
It’s typically used with groups of people:
- di kalangan remaja = among teenagers
- di kalangan guru = among teachers
You wouldn’t normally use it for non-human things; for that you’d usually just use antara or another structure.
You can often replace di kalangan with antara when you mean “among”, but there’s a nuance:
- Antara pelajar universiti, ramai suka belajar di perpustakaan.
- Di kalangan pelajar universiti, ramai suka belajar di perpustakaan.
Both are acceptable and understandable.
Nuance:
- Di kalangan focuses more on within a particular social/group context.
- Antara is more general: between / among and is not limited to people.
In everyday speech, antara is a bit shorter and very common; di kalangan sounds slightly more formal or written, especially in news or reports.
Malay has two common words for “many / a lot of”:
- Ramai – mainly used for people
- Banyak – used for things, animals, abstract stuff
Examples:
- Ramai pelajar = many students
- Ramai orang suka filem ini. = Many people like this movie.
vs.
- Banyak buku = many books
- Banyak masalah = many problems
In the sentence:
- … ramai suka belajar di perpustakaan.
Ramai stands for “many (people/students)”, so ramai is correct here.
Using banyak would sound wrong or very odd for people in standard Malay.
Grammatically, ramai itself is functioning as the subject here:
- Ramai suka belajar di perpustakaan.
= Many (of them) like to study in the library.
Malay often omits pronouns when they are clear from context. Here, di kalangan pelajar universiti already tells you we’re talking about university students, so Malay doesn’t need mereka (they).
You could say:
- Di kalangan pelajar universiti, ramai mereka suka belajar di perpustakaan.
…but this sounds unnatural and redundant.
If you want to make it more explicit and still natural, you might say:
- Di kalangan pelajar universiti, ramai pelajar suka belajar di perpustakaan.
(“Among university students, many students like to study in the library.”)
Yes, this is perfectly correct:
- Ramai pelajar universiti suka belajar di perpustakaan.
Both forms are natural:
- Di kalangan pelajar universiti, ramai suka belajar di perpustakaan.
- Ramai pelajar universiti suka belajar di perpustakaan.
Difference in feel:
- (1) puts “among university students” first as a context, then comments that many (of them) like studying in the library.
- (2) is more straightforward: “Many university students like to study in the library.”
Meaning is essentially the same. Sentence (2) is slightly simpler and very common in speech and writing.
You can say it with or without yang:
- Ramai suka belajar di perpustakaan.
- Ramai yang suka belajar di perpustakaan.
Both are grammatical.
With yang:
- Ramai yang suka… sounds a bit more emphatic, like “There are many who like…”.
It draws attention to the group as a specific set of people.
Without yang:
- Ramai suka… is slightly more neutral and direct: “Many like…”.
In your original sentence, without yang is perfectly fine and natural.
Belajar generally covers both “to study” and “to learn”, depending on context.
In this sentence:
- … suka belajar di perpustakaan.
= “… like to study in the library.”
Here, belajar implies doing academic work, revising, studying.
Membaca means “to read”.
- suka membaca di perpustakaan = “like to read in the library” (emphasises the act of reading)
- suka belajar di perpustakaan = “like to study in the library” (broader: reading, doing assignments, revising, etc.)
So belajar is the better choice for the idea of studying in general.
Di is a preposition meaning “at / in / on (location)”.
- di perpustakaan = in/at the library
In standard Malay, when you talk about a location, you normally must include di:
- Saya di rumah. = I am at home.
- Dia belajar di sekolah. = She studies at school.
Without di, perpustakaan alone would just be “library” (as a noun), not “in the library”.
So di cannot be dropped in standard written Malay here.
Pelajar universiti is a noun + noun combination:
- pelajar = student
- universiti = university
In Malay, the main noun typically comes first, and the modifying noun comes after:
- pelajar universiti = students (of a) university → university students
- guru sekolah = teachers (of a) school → school teachers
- buku sejarah = book (of) history → history book
So the order is the reverse of English.
English: university students
Malay: pelajar universiti
Yes. Perpustakaan is derived from pustaka, an old word meaning book / literary work.
Morphology:
- pustaka = book, literature
- per-…-an is a common prefix–suffix pair that can form nouns about places or institutions.
So:
- perpustakaan ≈ place of books → library
You see per-…-an in other place-related nouns too:
- perhentian (from henti, to stop) → stopping place, halt
- perkampungan (from kampung, village) → village area, settlement
The phrase:
- Di kalangan pelajar universiti, …
is a fronted prepositional phrase giving context (“among university students”).
Malay often separates such an opening phrase with a comma, similar to English:
- In the evening, I usually read.
- Pada waktu petang, saya biasanya membaca.
So the comma simply marks a pause after the introductory phrase. It’s standard and natural punctuation here.