Appendix:Indonesian personal pronouns

This appendix page explains the use of personal pronouns in Indonesian.

Generally, this category is represented by either aku or saya. While the latter is generally is used when speaking with older people or people with higher status (formal situations), some other people just simply mix them in free variation. Less common pronouns include beta, which is stereotypical of East Nusa Tenggara and the Maluku Islands (although in fact originated from royal Malay, known as bahasa istana); daku, an archaic/poetic version of aku; hamba, still used for its original meaning "servant"; and now dialectal awak. In the Jakarta (≈ Betawi) dialect, Hokkien Chinese borrowing gua ~ gue is used instead.

Like most other Austronesian languages, Indonesian has a clusivity distinction for the 1st person plural pronoun. The exclusive form ("we but not you") is kami, while the inclusive form ("we with you") is kita. Nonetheless, there is a colloquial tendency to merge the exclusive pronoun with the inclusive kita, which makes the pronoun system no different to other languages without clusivity. This is because only a few Indonesians clearly understand the difference between kami and kita, while the rest think that the distinction between two of them are in the formality, there are even some Indonesians who try to differentiate between the two by thinking that kami is equivalent to "we" while kita is equivalent to "us", or vice versa.

In eastern Indonesia, some variants of kita have been suffixed with -orang or -ong (ultimately from orang, possibly a Chinese influence, compare Hokkien 我儂／我侬), thus creating forms such as kitorang (can also be found in Malaysia), torang, kitong, and katong.

Generally, this category is represented by either kamu and anda. The former is most commonly used informally, while the latter is restricted to the formal language, it is also capitalized as Anda due to the influence of archaic Dutch Uw. The pronoun kau (or engkau), while being commonly found in literature (e.g. in songs, poetry, folklore, etc.), however, it is uncommon in speech except in some dialects. The original distinction in proto-Malayic between kau and kamu, was singular–plural rather than literary–informal (this is similar to English thou vs. you). In the Jakarta dialect, lu ~ lo is used instead.

When speaking with older people or people with higher status, the use of 2nd person pronouns is altogether avoided. Instead, people would use informal (clipped) honorifics in this place (e.g. bu, pak, kak, etc.). Since there are so many honorifics used in Indonesian, often coming from kinship nouns, these will not be discussed here.

In this category, the pronoun is kalian. However, it was clipped from earlier sekalian (“whole”), used in the phrases such as kamu sekalian, anda sekalian, and kau sekalian. In the Medan dialect, kelen is used instead.

Generally, this category is represented by dia, with shortened ia being restricted to the literature and some dialects. Additionally, beliau is occasionally used for older people or people with higher status.

This category is represented by mereka. In eastern Indonesia, dorang (< dia + orang, also possibly a Chinese influence) is used instead.

A reflexive pronoun is marked by placing diri before the pronoun.

• Aku membersihkan diriku ― I cleaned myself.

Before dalam (“in, inside”), and di (“at, in, on”) when used to refer to oneself (e.g. one's mind), diri is placed before the pronoun.

• dalam diriku ― inside of me

Sometimes diri is used in a non-reflexive way, especially in songs or poetries.

• lihatlah diriku ― look at me (literally, “look at myself”)
• betapa kejamnya dirimu! ― how cruel are you! (literally, “how cruel are yourself”)
• aku mencintai dirimu ― I love you (literally, “I love yourself”)

Because of this kind of nonstandard usage of diri, sometimes a reflexive pronoun is marked by placing diri before the pronoun together with sendiri after the pronoun.

• dia membersihkan dirinya sendiri ― he cleans himself (literally, “he cleans himself alone”)

An emphatic possessive adjective is marked by placing sendiri (literally means "alone") after the pronoun.

• Dia membasahi celananya sendiri. ― He wet his own pants.

Similiarly, an emphatic pronoun is marked by placing sendiri after the pronoun.

• Mereka sendiri yang menyapu jalanan. ― They themselves sweep the streets.

The only pronouns that have their own enclitic variants are aku, kamu, and dia ~ ia. The respective enclitics are -ku, -mu, and -nya. These can be used as the possessive (rumahku (“my house”)). The suffixes can also be used as the object of some transitive verbs formally (mencintaiku (“he loves me”)), but in the colloquial language, -ku tends to be replaced by full form aku. In the formal language, some prepositions could use these enclitics (inflected prepositions), namely dengan, kepada.

The enclitic variant of anda, *-nda, only survives in very few honorifics such as ananda and ibunda, or less commonly bapanda and cucunda.

In the colloquial language, -nya has a multitude of unusual functions, including:

• As the definite article (rumahnya "the house").
• Connecting the head with its possessor (rumahnya Amanda "Amanda's house ~ Amanda his house", or even mixed with pronouns as in rumahnya aku "my house"). This feature is sometimes called as the "ligature" on the book Colloquial Jakarta Indonesian by James Neil Sneddon from 2006.
• Connecting the adjective and the noun within a predicative sentence (rumahnya indah ~ indah rumahnya "the house is so beautiful"),
  • although when mixed with determiners ini and itu, these follow the noun and this suffix went transferred to the adjective (indahnya rumah ini "this house is so beautiful").
• Sporadically in the colloquial language, also used as the subject of intransitive verbs (katanya (“(s)he says, lit. his/her word”)).

The proclitic variant of aku and kau are ku- and kau-, used as the subject of any verb (kusayang (“I love”)), although most often treated as a shortened form in the speech. The latter also shares the same issues surrounding the use of kau.