Learn Hardcore Malay: Ibu saya sentiasa sediakan sedikit buah di atas meja. - My mother always prepares some fruit on the table.

Saya ibu would mean “I am a mother” (with the subject saya and predicate ibu), not “my mother”. So for possession, keep the pattern: noun + pronoun.

Why is it sentiasa sediakan and not just sentiasa sedia?

Sedia by itself usually means ready (an adjective) or to be ready, not “to prepare”.

Saya sudah sedia. = I am ready.

Sediakan is a verb meaning to prepare something / to get something ready.

Ibu saya sentiasa sediakan sedikit buah...
= My mother always prepares/provides some fruit...

Because the sentence is talking about preparing/putting fruit on the table, sediakan (not sedia) is the appropriate form.

Is sentiasa sediakan correct, or should it be sentiasa menyediakan?

Both can be correct, but they differ in style:

sentiasa menyediakan – more formal/standard, often used in writing, news, or formal speech.
sentiasa sediakan – very common in everyday spoken Malay, slightly more casual.

Grammatically, the “fully” inflected form is menyediakan, but dropping the meN- prefix in the presence of -kan (sediakan) is a common colloquial pattern. In many real-life contexts, people naturally say sentiasa sediakan.

What exactly does sentiasa mean? Is it different from selalu?

Both sentiasa and selalu can be translated as “always” / “all the time”, but there is a slight nuance:

sentiasa – often feels a bit stronger or more formal, with a sense of constancy or without fail.
selalu – very common, neutral everyday word for “always, often, usually”, depending on context.

In this sentence, you could say:

Ibu saya sentiasa sediakan sedikit buah...
Ibu saya selalu sediakan sedikit buah...

Both are natural; sentiasa may sound a touch more careful or emphatic.

Does sedikit buah mean “a little fruit” or “a few fruits”? Is it countable or uncountable here?

Sedikit literally means “a little / a small amount”. It can be used for both countable and uncountable nouns, depending on context.

sedikit air = a little water
sedikit kuih = a few pieces of kuih / some kuih

In sedikit buah, it means “some fruit / a bit of fruit / a small amount of fruit”. English forces you to choose between “a little” (uncountable) or “a few” (countable), but Malay sedikit is flexible and does not make that strict distinction.

Why is there no plural marker for buah? How do I know if it’s “fruit” or “fruits”?

Malay usually does not mark plural with a special ending, unlike English.

buah can mean fruit or fruits, depending on context.
If you want to make it clearly plural, you can use:
- a number: tiga biji buah (three fruits)
- a quantifier: banyak buah (many fruits)

In sedikit buah, the combination already implies “some fruit(s)”, so there is no need to add a plural marker. The English translation chooses “some fruit” or “some fruits” based on naturalness, but the Malay is neutral.

Does buah here mean “fruit” or is it that classifier buah I’ve seen before?

Here, buah is the noun meaning “fruit”.

Malay also has a classifier / measure word buah, used before many objects (e.g. sebuah rumah = a house, literally “one-CL house”). That is a different use.

In this sentence:

sedikit buah = some fruit (noun)
There is no classifier here; buah itself is the item being prepared.

What’s the difference between di atas meja, atas meja, and di meja?

All three are used, with small differences:

di atas meja – literally “on top of the table”.
- More explicit and slightly more formal/complete.
atas meja – very common in speech, di is dropped.
- Still means “on the table”. In everyday Malay this is natural and frequent.
di meja – literally “at the table / by the table”.
- Can mean near the table or at the table as a location, and sometimes also “on the table” from context, but di atas meja is the clearest way to say “on (surface of) the table”.

In your sentence, di atas meja clearly indicates the fruit is placed on the surface of the table.

Why is there no word for “the” in di atas meja? How do I know it’s “the table” and not “a table”?

Malay does not have direct equivalents of English “a/an” or “the”. The noun meja is neutral; context supplies whether it is definite or indefinite.

di atas meja can be “on a table” or “on the table”.

In this sentence, the natural interpretation is “on the table” because we are usually talking about a specific table in the house that both speaker and listener know about (e.g. the dining table). If you really need to emphasise specificity, you can add words like:

di atas meja itu = on that table
di atas meja makan = on the dining table

But normally, bare meja with context is enough.

How is tense expressed here? There’s no word for “always prepares”, “always prepared”, or “always is preparing”.

Malay verbs usually do not change form for tense. Time is shown by:

time adverbs (e.g. semalam, yesterday; esok, tomorrow)
context

In Ibu saya sentiasa sediakan sedikit buah di atas meja, the adverb sentiasa (“always”) gives the idea of a habitual action, which in English is usually translated with the present simple:

“My mother always prepares / always puts some fruit on the table.”

If you changed the time context, the Malay verb form sediakan would stay the same:

Dulu, ibu saya sentiasa sediakan sedikit buah...
= In the past, my mother always prepared some fruit...

The tense appears in English translation, not in the Malay verb itself.

Should Ibu be capitalised? Does Ibu saya differ from ibu saya?

In practice, you’ll see both:

ibu saya – “my mother” (common, normal usage).
Ibu (capital I) – sometimes used as a title or form of address, or as part of a name, similar to “Mother” in English when used as a proper noun.

In Ibu saya sentiasa sediakan..., capitalising Ibu can:

show respect or affection, like “Mother” instead of “my mother”; or
follow a writer’s style preference.

Grammatically, the sentence works with either Ibu saya or ibu saya; the difference is mostly stylistic and about tone/respect.