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The seven question words

Learn seven words and you can ask almost anything, because Indonesian does not reorder the sentence to make a question.

a1Lesson 17 of 436 min

By the end of this lesson

  • Ask what, who, where, when, how much, how and why
  • Build a question without changing the word order

English turns a statement into a question by moving words around: “you are going” becomes “are you going”. Indonesian does not do this. The word order stays exactly as it was and you drop a question word into the slot you are asking about.

That makes questions one of the easiest parts of the language.

The seven

apa ‘what’
siapa ‘who’
di mana ‘where’
kapan ‘when’
berapa ‘how much, how many’
bagaimana ‘how’
kenapa ‘why’

Dropping them in

Take a statement and replace the unknown part.

Kamu makan nasi. ‘You eat rice.’
Kamu makan apa? ‘What do you eat?’

Dia tinggal di Bali. ‘She lives in Bali.’
Dia tinggal di mana? ‘Where does she live?’

Nothing else moves. No auxiliary verb appears. The intonation rises at the end, and that is all.

The where family

Di mana asks where something is. Two relatives are just as common:

Ke mana? ‘Where to?’
Dari mana? ‘Where from?’

Mau ke mana? ‘Where are you going?’ is probably the question you will hear most often in Indonesia. It is small talk, not interrogation, and jalan-jalan ‘just wandering’ is a complete and normal answer.

Berapa does a lot of work

Berapa harganya? ‘How much is it?’
Umur berapa? ‘How old?’
Jam berapa? ‘What time?’

Note the last one: Indonesian asks “hour how much”, not “what time”.

What you’ll actually hear

Bagaimana is correct and almost nobody says it in conversation. Gimana is the everyday form.

What the book says: Bagaimana kabarmu? What you’ll hear: Gimana?

Words from this lesson

apawhat
siapawhoAlso used for names.
di manawhereke mana for 'where to', dari mana for 'where from'.
kapanwhen
berapahow much, how many
bagaimanahowGimana in speech.
kenapawhyMengapa is the formal version.