Have you encountered words like ‘mempertahankan’ yet? Or “mengedepankan”? Or “mempertanggungjawabkannya”? Now you must wonder how on earth you can remember all those words. 

In Indonesian language, there are affixes. 

1. Prefix: ber-; me-; pe-; di-; ke-; ter-; se-
2. Infix: -el-; -em-; -er-
3. Suffix: -lah; -kah; -pun; -i; -kan-; -an; -nya

For natives, understanding words with affixes may come naturally. Now here are a few tips so the next time you see a long word, you can guess what the definition is. This can also make you understand many words just by having not so extensive vocabulary.

Try to remove every letter that looks like affixes to find the root word.

Once you know the root word, then you can guess the meaning of the affixed form (provided that you know the root word’s definition of course).

So let’s come back to our example:

mempertahankan

There is me- in the beginning, so we should strip it (strip the mem- because the next letter following me- before consonant is the assisting letter/mutation), then the word will become 🡪 pertahankan

Then there is pe-, now we should strip per- (remember mutation because of consonant) 🡪 tahankan

Then there is –kan, strip it to and the word finally become 🡪 tahan

So if you check the definition of ‘tahan’, it means to ‘hold up’. And ‘mempertahankan’ is ‘to hold something together’. Pretty close, right?