Indonesian grammar is famous for being incredibly straightforward.

You’ll never have to memorize complicated verb conjugations to talk about the past or the future.

Verbs in Indonesian stay exactly the same regardless of when an action takes place.

Instead of changing the verb, you simply add specific time words or markers to the sentence.

This makes learning to speak fluently much faster compared to heavily conjugated languages.

I’ll show you exactly how to express time using these simple additions.

The basic rule of Indonesian verbs

Let’s look at the verb makan, which means “to eat”.

In English, “eat” changes to “ate” for the past and “will eat” for the future.

In Indonesian, makan always remains makan.

You only need to place a “time marker” before the verb or a “time word” at the beginning or end of the sentence.

Context does the heavy lifting for you.

Expressing the past tense

To show that an action has already happened, we most commonly use the word sudah.

Sudah roughly translates to “already” in English.

You simply place sudah directly before the verb.

You can also specify exactly when the action happened by adding words like kemarin (yesterday) or tadi (earlier).

When you use a specific time word like this, you don’t necessarily need to use sudah.

In formal writing or news broadcasts, you might also see the word telah used instead of sudah.

Telah serves the exact same function but carries a much more formal tone.

Expressing the future tense

Talking about the future relies on a very similar structure.

The standard word for “will” is akan.

You place akan immediately before the verb to show that an action hasn’t happened yet.

In casual, everyday speech, Indonesians frequently use the word mau instead.

While mau literally translates to “want”, it heavily doubles as “will” in spoken Indonesian.

You can also pair these markers with specific future time words like besok (tomorrow) or nanti (later).

Adding a specific time word gives the listener a clear picture of your timeline.

Common Indonesian time words

Memorizing a handful of these vocabulary words is the easiest way to master Indonesian tenses.

Here’s a quick reference table of the most useful time words and markers.