Our original discussion in the Portuguese forum took place at http://home.unilang.org/main/forum/viewtopic.php?t=15711.
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0stsee wrote:Psi-Lord wrote:[…] I mean, some concepts are really getting mixed up in my mind because of differences in sources… I read somewhere that transitive verbs have the prefix me- (e.g. Saya memakan tiga biji epal), but then I see transitive verbs used with no prefix at all (e.g. Saya makan tiga biji epal), and I can only conclude I’m missing some serious point.
By the way, I made these two examples up myself, as I couldn’t find a sentence that was written in both ways anywhere, so excuse me if they make no sense, hehe.
I think memakan is not even universally accepted in the written language. I see no difference between the two sentences you wrote, although I have to ask myself what epal is supposed to mean. Do you mean apel?
Btw, I almost never write memakan, even in formal writing.
First, about epal / apel. The word I wanted was indeed ‘apple’. In the Indonesian dictionary I was using (IndoDic.com), I found it as apel; however, in the Malay dictionary I was also using (Karyanet Kamus Inggeris-Melayu Dewan), I found it as epal. I confirmed in other dictionaries and that seems to be the same, so I assumed it was a difference between Indonesian and Malay; since I’m focusing on the latter, I chose epal instead of apel.
Incidentally, when I looked apel up in the Karyanet Kamus Dewan, it defined it as ‘(apél) IB minta banding; hapil.’.
Then, back to the thing with (me)makan, it seems I even picked a ‘problematic’ example, because the Karyanet Kamus Inggeris-Melayu Dewan gives ‘to eat’ as (me)makan in the transitive sense (in other words, it seems to imply the me- prefix is somehow optional). It gives two usage examples:
‣ Memakan semangkuk nasi.
‣ Dia tidak makan daging kambing.
One with me- and the other without it. Oh, well, I guess I’ll eventually get the hang of it. I think the trick at first is not to worry too much about affixes and just learn words that use them as new vocabulary, and then, in a later stage, start paying attention to patterns and learn how to build new words on my own.
0stsee wrote:Psi-Lord wrote:0stsee wrote:As for the penjodoh bilangan, I guess the different ways to translate a(n) or um(a)? If that's what you mean, you can most of the times replace it with satu.
I meant words such as biji for fruit, egor for animals, bilah for knives, etc. Is that what you thought I had in mind?
For fruits you can choose between buah and biji, which literally mean "fruit" and "seed"
Ah, okay. I thought that, despite its literal meaning, buah was used only for larger objects that didn’t fit in a specific group, such as dua buah kereta, enam buah komputer, dua belas buah bandar, etc.
0stsee wrote:For animals it's ekor (lit. means "tail").
Oops.
0stsee wrote:I personally hardly ever used bilah for knives.
If I ever use penjodoh bilangan for pisau (knive), I'd just say biji.
That’s another thing I guess only exposure to the language will teach me. It may be like in Japanese, where they have measure words for basically anything, as specific as it may be, but native Japanese speakers themselves aren’t acquainted with the more exotic, less used ones, and so using them will sound too bookish, too formal or even too snobbish, and picking a more general one will be the way to go.