Breakdown of Guru memerhati murid di perpustakaan.
Questions & Answers about Guru memerhati murid di perpustakaan.
The sentence Guru memerhati murid di perpustakaan follows S–V–O–(Place) order:
- Guru – subject (the teacher)
- memerhati – verb (observes / watches)
- murid – object ((the) student / students)
- di perpustakaan – prepositional phrase of place (in the library)
This is very similar to English: The teacher observes (the) student(s) in the library.
You can also move the place phrase to the front for emphasis:
- Di perpustakaan, guru memerhati murid. – In the library, the teacher observes the students.
Both are related to seeing, but there is a nuance:
- melihat – to see, to look at (neutral, everyday “see”)
- memerhati – to observe, to watch carefully (more focused, like “to observe”)
So:
- Guru melihat murid. – The teacher sees/looks at the student(s).
- Guru memerhati murid. – The teacher is observing / watching closely the student(s).
In many everyday contexts, melihat is more common; memerhati can sound a bit more formal or careful/attentive.
They are closely related:
- memerhati – to observe
- memerhatikan – to observe / to pay attention to
In practice:
- In standard Malay, memerhatikan is often considered the more “complete” or formal form.
- In real usage, especially in Malaysia, you will often see memerhati used on its own with the same meaning.
So:
- Guru memerhati murid.
- Guru memerhatikan murid.
Both can be understood as “The teacher observes the student(s).”
On its own, murid is number-neutral. It can mean:
- a student / a pupil
- students / pupils
The sentence Guru memerhati murid di perpustakaan could mean:
- The teacher observes *a student in the library.*
- The teacher observes *the students in the library.*
Context usually tells you which one is meant.
To make it clear:
- seorang murid – one student (person classifier)
- dua orang murid – two students
- murid-murid – students (plural, by reduplication)
- para murid – the students (collective/plural, slightly formal)
Use a plural marker for murid. Common options:
- Guru memerhati murid-murid di perpustakaan.
- Guru memerhati para murid di perpustakaan.
Both make it clear that more than one student is being observed.
Malay generally does not use articles like “the” or “a/an”.
So Guru memerhati murid di perpustakaan can map to several English possibilities:
- The teacher observes a student in the library.
- The teacher observes the student in the library.
- The teacher observes students in the library.
Definiteness (the vs a) and number (student vs students) are normally understood from context, or made explicit with other words (like seorang, murid-murid, para).
Here, di is a preposition meaning “in/at/on”:
- di perpustakaan – in the library
It is different from the passive prefix di- which attaches directly to verbs (e.g. ditulis = is/was written).
Key points:
- Preposition di:
- Written separately from the noun: di perpustakaan, di rumah, di sekolah.
- Passive prefix di-:
- Written joined to the verb: ditulis, dibaca, dilihat.
So di perpustakaan is clearly a location phrase, not a passive verb form.
Yes. Malay word order is somewhat flexible for adverbial phrases like place and time. All of these are grammatical:
- Guru memerhati murid di perpustakaan.
- Guru di perpustakaan memerhati murid. (less common; a bit marked)
- Di perpustakaan, guru memerhati murid. (emphasises the location)
The default neutral position is usually at the end: … murid di perpustakaan.
Perpustakaan means “library”.
Morphologically:
- pustaka – book / literature (a somewhat formal/old-fashioned word in Malay)
- per- … -an – a common noun-forming circumfix
So per + pustaka + an → perpustakaan = “place relating to books/literature” → library.
Pronunciation (rough guide):
- per-pus-ta-ka-an
- Stress usually on the second-to-last syllable: -ka- → per-pus-ta-KA-an
The sentence has no explicit tense marking.
Guru memerhati murid di perpustakaan can mean:
- The teacher is observing the students in the library.
- The teacher observes the students in the library.
- The teacher observed the students in the library.
- The teacher will observe the students in the library.
Time is usually shown with time words or aspect markers, for example:
- Tadi, guru memerhati murid di perpustakaan. – Earlier, the teacher observed…
- Sekarang guru memerhati murid di perpustakaan. – Now the teacher is observing…
- Esok guru akan memerhati murid di perpustakaan. – Tomorrow the teacher will observe…
You can also add sedang to highlight an ongoing action:
- Guru sedang memerhati murid di perpustakaan. – The teacher is (currently) observing…
Both can mean “student”, but there is a nuance in many contexts:
- murid – often used for school pupils, especially at primary and secondary level.
- pelajar – often used for students more generally, and especially for secondary school and university.
In daily conversation, there is overlap and both might be used.
In this sentence, Guru memerhati murid di perpustakaan, we usually imagine school pupils being watched by a school teacher.
A natural passive version would be:
- Murid diperhatikan guru di perpustakaan.
– The students are observed by the teacher in the library.
More explicitly (using oleh, “by”):
- Murid diperhatikan oleh guru di perpustakaan.
Notes:
- The passive prefix di- is added to the verb:
- memerhati / memerhatikan → diperhati / diperhatikan
- In the passive, the object (murid) becomes the subject of the sentence.
You can make both number and aspect explicit:
- Guru sedang memerhati seorang murid di perpustakaan.
Breakdown:
- Guru – the teacher
- sedang – marks a currently ongoing action (“is … -ing”)
- memerhati – is observing/watching
- seorang murid – one student (se- + orang, a classifier for people)
- di perpustakaan – in the library