Tuesday, March 20, 2012

Redundancy in Malay usage 1

In Malay, certain words carry the meaning of plurality and hence the nouns that follow them should not be duplicated anymore. I shall give two examples below.

Example 1: mengumpulkan (to gather)
a) Ahmad mengumpulkan daun-daun kering lalu memerunnya. [Wrong]
b) Ahmad mengumpulkan daun kering lalu memerunnya. [Correct]
[Ahmad gathered the dry leaves and burnt them.]
Explanation:
'mengumpulkan' has the meaning of being plural in nature. The noun 'daun-daun' (leaves) which is plural shoud be changed to daun (leaf)

Example 2: membanyakkan (to make it more or increase)
a) Johari membanyakkan buku-buku yang dibacanya. [Wrong]
b) Johari membanyakkan buku yang dibacanya. [Correct]
[Johari increased the books that he read.]
Explanation:
'membanyakkan' or to increase denotes plurality. Hence the object 'buku-buku' (books) shoud be replaced with 'buku' (book)

I shall give more examples in the posts to follow.