Classifier

 The Indonesian language has a fairly large number of classifiers to count objects based on their characteristics. Among the many classifiers for items, the most common one is buah, literally ‘fruit’. If you count cars, for instance, the you can use the classifier: sebuah mobil ‘a car, one car’, dua buah mobil ‘two cars’ etc.

The classifiers can come handy to singularize a word. The sentence Ada mobil di depan rumah kita can mean ‘there is a car in front of our house’, or ‘there are cars in front of our house’ because every noun in the Indonesian language can be singular or plural. In order to singularize the word you can say Ada sebuah mobil di depan rumah kita ‘there is a car in front of our house’.

The classifier buah can be used with many objects. Even objects that should carry a different classifier such as batang (used for stick-like objects), biji (used for very small round objects), helai (used for flat soft items), or keping (used for flat rigid items) can often take the classifier buah.

Animals are counted by ekor ‘tail’: seekor kucing ‘a cat’, dua ekor anjing ‘two dogs’, and people by orang: seorang perempuan ‘a woman’, dua orang perempuan ‘two women’ etc.

Examples

Root Word	Se + Root Word	Meaning
batang	sebatang lilin	a candle stick
buah	sebuah apel	an apple
cangkir	secangkir teh	a cup of tea
ekor	seekor kambing	a goat
gelas	segelas air	a glass of water
helai	sehelai rambut	one piece of hair
ikat	seikat bunga	a bunch of flowers
kejap	sekejap mata	in a blink of an eye
lembar	selembar kertas	one piece of paper
mangkuk	semangkuk sup	a bowl of soup
orang	seorang wanita	a woman
pasang	sepasang sepatu	a pair of shoes
piring	sepiring makanan	a plate of food
potong	sepotong kue	a slice of cake
sendok	sesendok makan	one table spoon
siung	sesiung bawang putih	a clove of garlic
suap	sesuap nasi	a mouthful of rice
tangkai	setangkai bunga	a flower
titik	setitik darah	a drop of blood