The Malay word for the pronoun “they” or “them” is mereka
Well just pronounce the FIRST syllable of each of the three names and you will get mereka as it should be pronounced (Mur-Ray-Ka). I hope this little mnemonic will be of help to you. At least it will show you that the e vowel has got two different sounds in Malay (see Lesson 50), one the schwa sound as the “Mur” in Murphy (the phonetic symbol for this sound being ə) and the other the ay sound as in Ray (if you know French, it’s the sound of é).
nya means it’s/his ____
You will notice that the suffix nya is tagged on to the noun to indicate “his” or “her”. So namanya can either mean “his name” or “her name” (depending on the context). Similarly bukunya can mean “his book” or “her book” and kawannya can mean “his friend” or “her friend”.
The first thing you will notice is the absence of the verb “to be” in Malay in the above sentences
In fact the verb “to be” is simply not needed here.
(Having said that, people who feel lost without putting in a verb in a sentence can note that the word adalah is sometimes used for the verb “is”. Thus Dia guru saya and Dia adalah guru saya both mean “He/She is my teacher”.)
Another thing you will notice is that while in English we have the pronoun before the noun (eg. my name, your name) in Malay it is just the opposite
the noun comes first then the pronoun (so in Malay we say “name my”, “name your”)
If you remember this it will serve you throughout this course as it is the same word order when it comes to adjectives and nouns (so “big car” becomes “car big” in Malay).
Apa nama anda?
Nama saya John. (change to yours)
Dia kawan saya. Peter
Apa namanya?
Namanya Peter.
Dia kawan saya. Mary
Apa namanya?
Namanya Mary.
the same pronoun “dia” is used for BOTH “he” and “she”. Only the context will tell whether you’re talking about a man or a woman.
Please note that the colloquial forms (Apa nama anda? and Apa namanya? ) are used in this lesson. The formal forms would be Siapa nama anda? and Siapa namanya?
The formal forms only confuse English-speaking students because Siapa actually means “Who” as in Siapa dia? = “Who is he (or she)?” while Apa normally means “What” as in Apa ini? (What is this?). So to make it easier for English-speaking students (why be pedantic when you are a beginner?) I am using the colloquial form
