Editing Indonesian language (section)

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Indonesian grammar does not regularly mark [[plural]]s. In Indonesian, to change a singular into a plural one either repeats the word or adds {{lang|id|para}} before it (the latter for living things only); for example, "students" can be either {{lang|id|murid-murid}} or {{lang|id|para murid}}. Plurals are rarely used in Indonesian, especially in informal parlance. Reduplication is often mentioned as the formal way to express the plural form of nouns in Indonesian; however, in informal daily discourse, speakers of Indonesian usually use other methods to indicate the concept of something being "more than one". Reduplication may also indicate the conditions of variety and diversity as well, and not simply plurality.

[[Reduplication]] is commonly used to emphasise plurality; however, reduplication has many other functions. For example, {{lang|id|orang-orang}} means "(all the) people", but {{lang|id|orang-orangan}} means "scarecrow". Similarly, while {{lang|id|hati}} means "heart" or "liver", {{lang|id|hati-hati}} is a verb meaning "to be careful". Also, not all reduplicated words are inherently plural, such as {{lang|id|orang-orangan}} "scarecrow/scarecrows", {{lang|id|biri-biri}} "a/some sheep" and {{lang|id|kupu-kupu}} "butterfly/butterflies". Some reduplication is rhyming rather than exact, as in {{lang|id|sayur-mayur}} "(all sorts of) vegetables".

Distributive affixes derive mass nouns that are effectively plural: {{lang|id|pohon}} "tree", {{lang|id|pepohonan}} "flora, trees"; {{lang|id|rumah}} "house", {{lang|id|perumahan}} "housing, houses"; {{lang|id|gunung}} "mountain", {{lang|id|pegunungan}} "mountain range, mountains".

Quantity words come before the noun: {{lang|id|seribu orang}} "a thousand people", {{lang|id|beberapa pegunungan}} "a series of mountain ranges", {{lang|id|beberapa kupu-kupu}} "some butterflies".

Plural in Indonesian serves just to explicitly mention the number of objects in sentence. For example, {{lang|id|Ani membeli satu kilo mangga}} (Ani buys one kilogram of mangoes). In this case, "mangoes", which is plural, is not said as {{lang|id|mangga-mangga}} because the plurality is implicit: the amount '''a kilogram''' means more than one mango rather than one giant mango. So, as it is logically, one does not change the singular into the plural form, because it is not necessary and considered a [[pleonasm]] (in Indonesian often called {{lang|id|pemborosan kata}}).