Breakdown of Sepupu saya memohon visa pelajar melalui sebuah agensi kecil.
Questions & Answers about Sepupu saya memohon visa pelajar melalui sebuah agensi kecil.
In Malay, possessive pronouns (my, your, his, etc.) normally come after the noun:
- sepupu saya = my cousin
- buku saya = my book
- rumah mereka = their house
Putting saya before the noun (saya sepupu) is ungrammatical in this structure.
So the correct pattern is: [noun] + [possessive pronoun].
Sepupu by itself is gender-neutral. To specify gender, you add lelaki (male) or perempuan (female):
- sepupu lelaki saya / sepupu saya lelaki = my male cousin
- sepupu perempuan saya / sepupu saya perempuan = my female cousin
All of these are understood; in everyday speech, people often just say sepupu saya and context tells you the gender.
Both come from the same root mohon (to request/apply).
memohon – more formal, fully inflected verb; common in writing and formal speech.
- Sepupu saya *memohon visa pelajar.*
mohon – used both as root and as a more informal/short form in speech:
- Sepupu saya *mohon visa pelajar.* (colloquial, but acceptable)
In careful or written Malay, memohon is preferred. In casual talk, mohon is very common.
Not naturally in this context.
- memohon visa = “apply for a visa”
- meminta = “to ask for / request” (often for something more informal or direct)
You might say:
- meminta tolong = ask for help
- meminta duit = ask for money
For official processes (visas, scholarships, jobs), Malay strongly prefers memohon:
- memohon visa, memohon kerja, memohon biasiswa (scholarship)
Malay usually puts the main noun first and the describing noun after it:
- visa pelajar = visa (for) students → student visa
- kad pelajar = card (of) student → student card
- pekerja asing = worker (who is) foreign → foreign worker
So the pattern is like “visa of student” → visa pelajar, not pelajar visa.
Malay usually does not use an article like a or the. The noun visa pelajar is neutral:
- visa pelajar can mean “a student visa” or “the student visa”, depending on context.
If you really want to be explicit about “one”, you can say:
- satu visa pelajar = one student visa
But for something like visa applications, just “visa pelajar” is normal and understood as “a student visa” in most contexts.
melalui literally means “through / via / by means of”:
- memohon visa pelajar melalui sebuah agensi kecil
= applied for a student visa through a small agency
dengan usually means “with / using”, and in this sentence it sounds less natural.
You could say:
- memohon visa pelajar melalui agensi (best)
- memohon visa pelajar dengan bantuan agensi (with the help of an agency)
For the “via an agency” idea, melalui is the standard and most idiomatic choice.
sebuah is a classifier (like a measure word) often used for objects / organizations / buildings, and it can also carry a sense of “one” or “a certain / a particular”:
- sebuah agensi kecil ≈ a small (one) agency
You can omit it:
- melalui agensi kecil
Both are grammatical. Differences:
- sebuah agensi kecil – sounds a bit more specific, like one particular small agency.
- agensi kecil – slightly more general: a small agency in general, without highlighting “one”.
In everyday use, both are common; adding sebuah is slightly more formal or more “carefully” phrased.
In Malay, adjectives normally come after the noun:
- agensi kecil = small agency
- rumah besar = big house
- kereta baharu = new car
So the pattern is [noun] + [adjective].
kecil agensi is wrong in this normal descriptive structure.
They refer to different things:
agensi = agency (the organization)
- agensi pelancongan = travel agency
- agensi pekerjaan = employment agency
ejen = agent (the person)
- ejen insurans = insurance agent
- ejen hartanah = real-estate agent
In your sentence, you need the organization, so agensi kecil (a small agency) is correct, not ejen kecil.
Malay verbs do not change form for tense. memohon can mean:
- is applying / applies / applied, depending on context.
To make time more explicit, Malay often uses time words or particles:
Sepupu saya sudah memohon visa pelajar…
= My cousin already applied for a student visa…Sepupu saya sedang memohon visa pelajar…
= My cousin is applying for a student visa…
Without any marker, you rely on context. In many narratives, a bare verb like memohon is naturally read as past.
You’ll sometimes hear or see memohon untuk, but in this particular structure it is more natural to omit “untuk”:
- ✅ memohon visa pelajar (best)
- ⚠️ memohon untuk visa pelajar (understandable but not the most idiomatic here)
memohon untuk is more natural when followed by a verb phrase or clause, not a direct noun:
- memohon untuk belajar di luar negara = apply to study overseas
- memohon untuk dipertimbangkan = apply to be considered
So for “apply for a visa”, use memohon visa.
The sentence is neutral to slightly formal:
- Vocabulary like memohon, melalui, agensi is fine in formal writing (emails, applications, news) and also in normal spoken Malay.
To make it more clearly casual, someone might shorten or rephrase:
- Sepupu saya mohon visa pelajar melalui agensi kecil.
- Sepupu aku mohon visa pelajar guna agensi kecil. (more colloquial: guna = use)
But as written, it’s perfectly acceptable both in polite conversation and in standard written Malay.