Past Tense in Indonesian

Published by The LingoNomad

Featured article photo: Indonesia by Aleksandar Pasaric (CC0 Licensed)

One of the few things that pulls people into learning Indonesian is that it is supposedly a simple language with no verb conjugations. This is true to some extent—there is no need to conjugate verbs into past or future tenses. So how would one talk about the past? Turns out there are three ways to do it!

1. Use Sudah

The simplest way to describe an action that has been completed is by adding the word sudah in front of a verb. The word sudah means 'has already'. For example:

Dia sudah tidur.
'He has already slept.'
Saya sudah minum teh.
'I have already drunk the tea.'

Notice how the word tidur 'slept' and minum 'drink' are not conjugated at all. The word sudah makes all the difference here. In present tense, these are how the sentences will look like:

Dia tidur.
'He sleeps.'
Saya minum teh.
'I drink tea.'

Another thing to notice is that, when using sudah, the translations use the perfect tense conjugations in English. There are no present perfect tense or past perfect tense conjugations in Indonesian, so as far as Indonesian is concerned, past tense, present perfect and past perfect tenses can all be treated the same way—these all describe actions in the past, and to describe such actions, there are only three ways to describe them and they are all in this lesson post.

2. Use the Time Words

The second way to talk about the past in Indonesian is to use the time words to specify the time of when something happened. Take English for example, if someone were to say, "I sleep yesterday," instead of "I slept yesterday," you would still be able to understand that it is something that happened in the past even though the sentence is grammatically incorrect because the word 'yesterday' is there, specifying that it happened yesterday.

In Indonesian, you would do the same thing. But you do not have to conjugate the verb, all you have to do is to specify the time when something happens to be grammatically correct. For example:

Dia tidur kemarin.
'He/She slept yesterday.'
Saya minum teh tadi pagi.
'I drank tea this morning.'
Kamu pergi ke mana minggu lalu?
'Where did you go last week?'

Again, the word tidur 'slept', minum 'drink', and pergi 'go' are not conjugated and you would use it in the same way when you are talking about the present or the future.

So what this means is that, other than the word sudah, you only have to learn words that specify time like 'yesterday, this morning, last week' to talk about the past in Indonesian. Convenient, right?

Let's go through some of those words now.

Yesterday = Kemarin
This morning = Pagi ini / Tadi pagi
This afternoon = Siang ini / Tadi siang
This evening / Tonight = Malam ini / Tadi malam
Yesterday morning = Kemarin pagi
Yesterday afternoon = Kemarin siang
Yesterday evening / Last night = Kemarin malam
Last week = Minggu lalu
Last month = Bulan lalu
Last year = Tahun lalu
... seconds ago = ... detik yang lalu
... minutes ago = ... menit yang lalu
... hours ago = ... jam yang lalu

... days ago = ... hari yang lalu
e.g. Two days ago = Dua hari yang lalu
... nights ago = ... malam yang lalu
e.g. Three nights ago = Tiga malam yang lalu
... weeks ago = ... minggu yang lalu
... months ago = ... bulan yang lalu
... years ago = ... tahun yang lalu

3. Use Both Sudah and the Time Words

No new words to remember here, this is just a note that you can use sudah and the time words in the same sentence! For example:

Dia sudah tidur kemarin.
'He/She has already slept yesterday.'
Saya sudah minum teh tadi pagi.
'I have already drunk tea this morning.'

Learn Also

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