Last updated on April 18, 2022
There are many words for “you”: Anda is just one of them and is by no means the most commonly used. In fact Anda is a fairly recent invention, dating from the 1950s. It is slightly trendy, a bit formal, and is mostly used among Indonesia’s educated, urbanised minority. It is also widely used in advertising and public announcements. It is the closest Indonesian has to the all-purpose English “you”.
But unlike “you”, Anda cannot be used indiscriminately to all and sundry. That is why it is important to master the use of Bapak and Ibu (and, little by little, the many other words for “you” in Indonesian).
When two people are close friends, they will probably address each other with the second person pronoun kamu. Kamu is sometimes misused by foreign learners of Indonesian, as if it were the equivalent of the English “you” and can be used to address all and sundry. It cannot.
Kamu is used in three main ways.
- It is used between two people of roughly similar age who are on very intimate terms with each other.
- It is used by an adult or a parent to address a child, son or daughter (but may not be used by the child to talk back to the adult).
- It is also sometimes used by adults to express disdain, or to “talk down” to another adult.
By the way, when kamu is used as a possessive pronoun (“your”) it is often (though far from always) abbreviated to –mu and tacked on to a noun as a suffix.
rumahmu
also: rumah kamu – your house
orang-tuamu
also: orang-tua kamu – your parents