A noun is a word (other than a pronoun) used to identify any of a class of people, places, or things.
There are two basic Indonesian nouns: singular and plural. Indonesian noun has no specific way to distinguish either it is countable or uncountable.
Noun in Indonesian is called ‘kata benda’. Indonesian noun has no specific way to distinguish either it is countable or uncountable. You just need to use your logic to separate which one is countable and which one is not.
Singular Noun
Ada anjing → There is a dog.
In Indonesian “anjing” already contains a singular meaning without additional partikel. “Anjing” means one dog. In English you have to put ‘a’ to indicate that is a singular noun.
Plural Nouns
There are several ways to make a noun become plural in Indonesian.
1. Reduplicate the noun
- buku = a book (singular) → buku-buku = books (plural)
- anjing = a dog (singular) → anjing-anjing = pigs (plural)
In this case you don’t know how many “buku” or “anjing” by saying “buku-buku” or “anjing-anjing”.
2. Adding the number in front of the noun
- buku = a book (singular) → dua buku = two books (plural)
- anjing = a dog (singular) → tiga anjing= three dogs (plural)
3. Plural for Unaccountable noun
Nouns like susu (milk), air (water), nasi (rice) are unaccountable nouns. You can not say “susu-susu” for plural form. You can add a measurement in front of the words.
- segelas air = a glass of water → 2 gelas air = two glasses of water
You can make the “gelas” plural but not the “air”.
Plural: Many
When you want to say “there are more___” very often you do not need to say ada. Banyak on its own is enough. So in certain contexts the word banyak seems to incorporate the notion of ada in addition to its core meaning of “much/many”. You can say, for example:
- Banyak orang di sini.
- There are many people here.
- Banyak sekali surat kabar di kamarnya.
- There are lots of newspapers in her room.
Similarly, when you are comparing quantity and you want to say “there are more ____” again you don’t usually need to say ada (there is, there are etc.). Lebih banyak already expresses the notion of “there are”, “there were” etc.
- Lebih banyak taksi di depan stasiun daripada di depan kantor pos.
- There are more taxis in front of the station than in front of the post office.
- Lebih banyak mahasiswa di Universitas Sydney daripada di Universitas Canberra.
- There are more students at Sydney University than at the University of Canberra.
- Tetapi lebih banyak orang yang bekerja di pabrik itu!
- But there are more people working at that factory!