Saya belajar di sekolah menengah itu.

I study at that high school.

Breakdown of Saya belajar di sekolah menengah itu.

• saya: I
• itu: that
• di: at
• belajar: to study
• sekolah menengah: the high school

Questions & Answers about Saya belajar di sekolah menengah itu.

Is saya always the word for “I” in Malay? Are there other options?

Saya is the standard, polite, and neutral way to say “I” in Malay.
You use saya with strangers, elders, teachers, in writing, and in most formal or semi‑formal situations.

A common informal alternative is aku, which you’d use with close friends or younger siblings. There are also very formal or special pronouns like beta, patik, etc., but for a learner, saya is the safest and most widely appropriate choice.

Why isn’t there a word like “am” before belajar? Why not “Saya am belajar …”?

Malay does not use a verb like English “to be” (am/is/are) before normal verbs.
The verb belajar already works on its own; you just say Saya belajar … for “I study / I am studying …”.

Words like am / is / are are part of English tense and aspect; Malay usually does not mark these with a separate verb.

How do I show past, present, or future tense with belajar in similar sentences?

The basic form Saya belajar di sekolah menengah itu is tense‑neutral; it can be past, present, or future depending on context.
To make the time clearer, Malay usually adds time words or aspect markers, for example:

• Saya sedang belajar di sekolah menengah itu. – I am currently studying at that secondary school.
• Saya dulu belajar di sekolah menengah itu. – I used to study / I studied at that secondary school.
• Saya akan belajar di sekolah menengah itu. – I will study at that secondary school.

So belajar itself doesn’t change; you add other words around it.

Does belajar mean “to learn” or “to study” here?

Belajar can mean both “to learn” and “to study”, depending on context.

• With a subject or skill: Saya belajar bahasa Melayu. – I am learning Malay.
• With a place of education: Saya belajar di sekolah menengah itu. – I study / I studied at that secondary school (I attend(ed) that school).

In this sentence, because of di sekolah menengah itu, the meaning is about where you go to school, so “study (attend)” is more natural in English.

What exactly does di mean, and when do I use it?

Di is a preposition that usually means “at / in / on” when talking about location.
In di sekolah menengah itu, it marks the place where the studying happens: “at that secondary school.”

You typically use di before a place: di rumah (at home), di pejabat (at the office), di bandar (in the city).
For movement to a place, you would usually use ke, not di (e.g. ke sekolah – to school).

Could I say pada instead of di here (like Saya belajar pada sekolah menengah itu)?

No, not in this context. With physical locations like schools, houses, or cities, Malay uses di, not pada.

Pada is more common with:

• time expressions: pada pukul tiga (at three o’clock), pada hari Isnin (on Monday),
• or more abstract relationships (e.g. pada pendapat saya – in my opinion).

So you should say Saya belajar di sekolah menengah itu, not pada.

What does sekolah menengah refer to exactly?

Sekolah menengah means secondary school, i.e. the level after sekolah rendah (primary/elementary school).
Depending on the country and system, this roughly covers what English speakers might call middle school + high school or just high school.

So sekolah menengah itu is “that secondary school / that high school.”

Why is itu placed after sekolah menengah, instead of before it like “that secondary school”?

In Malay, demonstratives like ini (this) and itu (that) normally come after the noun phrase, not before it.
So the pattern is [noun + modifiers] + itu/ini, for example:

• buku itu – that book
• rumah besar itu – that big house
• sekolah menengah itu – that secondary school

Putting itu after sekolah menengah is the normal, grammatical order in Malay.

Do I have to include itu? What changes if I leave it out?

You don’t have to include itu.

• Saya belajar di sekolah menengah itu. – refers to a specific secondary school which both speaker and listener can identify (already mentioned, or clear from context).
• Saya belajar di sekolah menengah. – more general, often understood as “I (am at the) secondary school level” or “I study at a secondary school (unspecified which one).”

So itu adds specificity, similar to “that (particular) …” or “the …” in English.

How would I say “this secondary school” instead of “that secondary school”?

You simply replace itu (that) with ini (this) and keep the same word order:

• Saya belajar di sekolah menengah ini. – I study / studied at this secondary school.

Again, the demonstrative comes after the noun phrase: sekolah menengah ini.

There’s no word for “the” or “a” in the sentence. How do articles work in Malay?

Malay does not have articles like “the” or “a/an”.
A bare noun like sekolah menengah can mean “a secondary school”, “the secondary school”, or just “secondary school” in a general sense; context decides.

To make “a/one” more explicit, you can use a classifier, for example:

• sebuah sekolah menengah – one / a secondary school.

To make “the / that / this” more explicit, you often use itu or ini, as in sekolah menengah itu (that/the secondary school).

Is the word order fixed, or can I move di sekolah menengah itu somewhere else in the sentence?

The normal, neutral word order is Subject – Verb – Place, as in:
Saya (S) belajar (V) di sekolah menengah itu (Place).

You can move the place phrase to the front for emphasis or in more literary style:

• Di sekolah menengah itu, saya belajar. – At that secondary school, I study/studied.

But putting it between the subject and verb, like Saya di sekolah menengah itu belajar, is not the usual neutral pattern and would sound odd in everyday speech.