Questions & Answers about Dia sudah pergi sebelum saya tiba.
What does dia mean here? Is it he or she?
Dia can mean either he or she. Malay third-person singular pronouns do not normally mark gender, so you understand it from context.
So:
- Dia sudah pergi = He has already left or She has already left
If the wider conversation makes the person clear, Malay usually does not need anything more specific.
Why is there no past-tense form on pergi or tiba?
Malay verbs do not change form for tense the way English verbs do.
So:
- pergi stays pergi
- tiba stays tiba
Time is usually shown by:
- time words
- context
- aspect markers like sudah
In this sentence, the past meaning comes from the whole sentence, especially sudah and the sequence created by sebelum.
What does sudah mean in this sentence?