Belajar B.Melayu di NIU

We have already studied some of the most important question words and phrases:

Apa? 'What?'

Siapa? 'Who'

Di mana? 'Where at'

Dari mana? 'Where from'

Ke mana? 'Where to?'

Now we are learning another very important word that we need when we want to ask questions:

Berapa? 'How much?' or 'How many?'

Berapa pen?  'How many pens (are there)?'

Dua puluh enam pen.  '26 pens.'

Ada berapa buku? 'How many books are there?'

Ada dua buku. 'There are two books.'

Remember ada means 'there are' or 'there exist'

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To answer a question with berapa we need to be able to count!  In the last class you began to learn some numbers.

satu            1

dua             2

tiga             3

empat       4

lima           5

enam         6

tujuh         7

lapan         8

sembilan  9

sepuluh    10

Remember all of the e's in these numbers don't sound like an English E.  These are the e's that sound like uh in English,

uh-mpat '4'

uh-nam '6';

like the vowel in 'some'

some-bilan  '9';

Or the u in 'supper' or 'suppose'

sup-uluh.

You should practice these numbers so you can hear them and say them quickly. These are numbers, people rattle off numbers in English and Malay quickly.

In this class we studied some more numbers.

After sepuluh 'ten', we get into the 'teens', except in Malay the 'teens' begin at 11!!

So the counter for teens is belas.  Remember this e is like the other e's. It's pronounced like the beginning of  'bluster'. Between b and l you usually won't hear this.  Remember the word for 'glass' is gelas but we don't hear that e.

Sometimes the word for 1 is shortened. So satu is sometimes just se. This se is pronounced like the u in English suppose.

So 1-belas is sebelas, but it sounds like su-blus.

sebelas                   11

dua belas               12

tiga belas               13

empat belas          14

lima belas              15

enam belas            16

tujuh belas             17

lapan belas             18

sembilan belas      19

OK, that was the teens (including 1-teen (eleven) and 2-teen (twelve)). Let's talk about the -tys. In English we have twenty, thirty, forty and so forth.  In Malay this set of number units starts at '10', not 20.  The marker for units of ten is puluh.

We already know 1-ty (ten):

sepuluh                  10

Now we have learned:

dua puluh              20

tiga puluh              30

empat puluh         40

lima puluh              50

enam puluh            60

tujuh puluh             70

lapan puluh             80

sembilan puluh      90

Don't forget to pronounce the final h, and remember how to pronounce se- at the beginning of a word and all the 'short' sounds.

To talk about quantities or amounts between 20 and 30, for example, all we have to do is add the number we want to refer to.  So it's a little like English.  We say twenty '20' but twenty-three '23'. We just add the number 1-9 that we need.  See how Malay works in a similar way:

dua puluh                          20

dua puluh satu                 21

dua puluh dua                  22

dua puluh tiga                  23

dua puluh empat             24

dua puluh lima                 25

dua puluh enam              26

dua puluh tujuh              27

dua puluh lapan              28

dua puluh sembilan       29

So at this point, we should be able to count to 99.

Berapa batang pen dari Washington?

Dua puluh enam batang pen dari Washington.

Ada berapa pelajar di kelas bahasa Melayu?

Ada tiga belas pelajar  di kelas bahasa Melayu.

Berapa buah botol di iklan itu?

Tujuh puluh tiga buah botol di iklan itu.

After 99 we move to the hundreds. In Malay the marker for hundred is ratus. Just as in the series for teens or tens, the satu appears in a short form se (sounds like su in English su-ppose). So,

seratus                     100

and then:

dua ratus                 200

tiga ratus                 300

empat ratus            400

lima ratus                 500

enam ratus               600

tujuh ratus               700

lapan ratus              800

sembilan ratus       900

Like puluh we combine ratus (hundred units) with other numbers

173      seratus tujuh puluh tiga

448     empat ratus empat puluh lapan

812      lapan ratus dua belas

999     sembilan ratus sembilan puluh sembilan

Once we know a few words, namely the numbers 1-10, the words for teen, -ty and hundred, we can count till 999 and more importantly we can answer many questions about quantities and numbers.