Getting angry in Indonesian is a difficult subject to talk about.

Indonesians are, by and large, well-known for not getting very angry. The country often seems to tourists like a literal land of smiles.

A very important word in Indonesian is santai, meaning “relaxed” or “at ease.” If you’re stressed or frustrated, and very clearly not santai, then you’re probably going to alienate others.

How about on TV, though?

Have you ever seen Indonesian sinetron soap operas? They’re filled with angry outbursts and furious rants at the world.

So even though you might not see or hear it much in real life, Indonesian angry words and phrases definitely exist. If you want to take your Indonesian to the next level, you’d better learn them.

Table of Contents

1. Discussing Your Angry Feelings
2. Telling Others to Scram
3. Sending Warning Signals
4. Ordering Others Around
5. Play the Blame Game
6. Everybody Calm Down
7. Put Up Your Dukes
8. Say You’re Sorry
9. Conclusion

1. Discussing Your Angry Feelings

When you want to talk about your feelings in Indonesian, you can use the word merasa, meaning “to feel.” The root rasa by itself means “feeling” or “flavor,” so when you add the verbal prefix to it, it describes experiencing such a feeling.

If you haven’t yet, take a look at our vocabulary resource for talking about feelings in Indonesian.

As a cultural note, Indonesians are alright with talking about angry feelings, but actually going beyond that to blaming others or even rebuking them is rarely seen.

This is the most basic way to say you’re angry in Indonesian:

• Aku merasa marah.
  “I feel angry.”

To tell the truth, you don’t even need merasa. This works too:

• Aku marah.
  “I’m angry.”

That’s definitely a less formal way of putting things, but it’s not rude either. It’s simply a shortened version of the first phrase, just in the same way that the Indonesian verb adalah doesn’t always need to be explicitly said.

The Indonesian language allows us to be a little more creative with that root word marah. We can turn it into verbs, like so:

• Aku memarahi dia.
  “I was angry with him.”

The word memarahi (“to anger” ) is a little bit formal, so in colloquial speech and writing, you’ll hear the following sentence structure which is rather similar to the English version.

• Itu membuat aku marah.
  “That makes me angry.”

You can also come up with questions and explanations for this feeling, depending on how much detail you want to go into. It all comes from that single word!

• Mengapa kamu begitu marah?
  “Why are you so angry?”
• Aku marah karena kamu memukulku.
  “I’m angry because you hit me.”

Interestingly, there are only a couple of synonyms for “angry” in Indonesian. Marah covers pretty much everything. There are some words that come from Malay, such as bergelora or geram, but those are totally unused in everyday language.

2. Telling Others to Scram

This is one of the few times it’s reasonably acceptable to raise your voice and publicly get angry at someone in Indonesia. Just like in every country, there are some people who will harass others and refuse to take no for an answer.

If there’s somebody being pushy, you can use this first phrase. The actual feeling conveyed is going to be totally different with a different inflection. Speak seriously and firmly just like you would in English.

• Aku tidak mau.
  “I don’t want (it).”
• Pergilah dari sini!
  “Get out of here!”
• Aku tak mau lagi mendengar keluh kesahmu!
  “I don’t want to hear you complain!”

3. Sending Warning Signals

• Awas kau!
  “Watch out, you!”

The word awas usually appears on warning signs. Kau is another way to say kamu, and it’s a very familiar variant. If you don’t know a person well, calling them kau is pretty weird and perhaps even insulting.

• Sini, aku layani!
  “I’m ready to fight!”

Melayani is simply the verb “to fight” in Indonesian, and so this is a way to say “I’m ready for action.”

• Sudah selesai?
  “Are you done talking?”
• Sudah kubilang berkali-kali.
  “I’ve already said it several times.”

This is an interesting feature of Indonesian called “reduplication.” The word kali by itself means “time,” as in “one time, two times.” If we add the ber- prefix and reduplicate it, it gives the word a sense of “countless times,” including the implication of exasperation.

• Cukup! or Sudahlah!
  “That’s enough!”

The word sudah fills several grammatical functions in Indonesian. It literally means “already,” and so it functions often as a past tense marker. Here, adding the -lah suffix shows that we’ve really had it, and that there’s absolutely nothing else we want to hear!

• Aku tidak akan memaafkanmu.
  “I’m not going to forgive you.”

In Indonesian culture, “forgive and forget” is the way things get done. If you come out and directly say that you’re not going to forgive what someone else has done, that might scare them straight.

As luck would have it, Indonesian has an idiom about getting angry that’s awfully close to what’s said in English.

• Awas, dia akan naik darah.
  “Watch out, he’s going to blow up.”

Naik means “to raise” and darah means “blood.” “Raising your blood” seems quite similar to “raising your temper,” or perhaps something about high blood pressure. In either case, it should be easy to remember.

4. Ordering Others Around

We’ve already seen how, in Indonesian, you can make a verb into a polite or neutral request by adding -lah to the end.

• Berdirilah.
  “Stand up, please.”

Now is not the time for polite requests. Now is the time for demands.

By simply saying the verb in a forceful tone of voice, you’re communicating exactly the same thing you would with a request, just much ruder.

Here are a couple more great Indonesian angry phrases—normally if you’re shouting at someone like this, there are only a couple of things that you’re likely to say.

• Tutup mulutmu!
  “Shut your mouth!”
• Jangan bicara! Dengar!
  “Don’t talk! Listen!”
• Dengar kataku!
  “Listen to what I’m saying!”

5. Play the Blame Game

Anger usually has a reason behind it. With these phrases, you’ll let people know exactly what they did to cause your frustration.

If you say these strongly enough, then they might feel so bad that they back down and apologize by themselves.

• Kamu tidak pernah menghargaiku.
  “You never appreciate me.”
• Semuanya adalah kesalahanmu.
  “Everything is your fault.”

Now here are some good rhetorical questions. If you hear these, there’s not really any explanation you can give—just try and ride out the storm.

• Mengapa kau begitu?
  “Why are you like this?”
• Apa maksud semua ini?
  “What’s the meaning of this?”

6. Everybody Calm Down

There’s one last chance for things not to get crazy. When tempers are flaring, you can use a couple of well-timed phrases to remind everyone to take deep breaths and maybe set aside the issue.

The word for “calm” is tenang. When you’re trying to calm somebody down who’s upset, especially if you don’t know them, you should absolutely use polite pronouns when you address them.

• Tenang dulu, Pak!
  “Take it easy, mister!”

In Indonesian culture, offering a refreshment is one of the most basic fundamentals of hospitality. If there’s a water cooler nearby or even an unopened bottle, you can offer that to the affronted party.

• Ini diminum dulu, ya.
  “Here, drink this.”

There are a few more tricks going on with language here. The word dulu literally means “first,” and so by saying “drink first” or “calm down first,” you’re acknowledging that their complaint is valid and that you want to hear about it—once they’re in a better state of mind.

• Oke, saya dengar.
  “Alright, I’m listening.”
• Saya mengerti ada kesalahan.
  “I understand there’s a mistake here.”

Again, these phrases make it easy for the other person to feel respected and valid, and that takes a lot of the force out of somebody’s anger.

7. Put Up Your Dukes

Now it’s time for the real meat of this topic: the insults. You couldn’t calm down the situation, so instead you’ve got to bring it down to their level.

It might be surprising, but Indonesian doesn’t have an incredibly rich variety of swear words. There are some that we won’t print here because they’re too vulgar in English. But the list as a whole isn’t actually too long.

The most common insult in Indonesian might surprise you.

• Anjing!
  “Dog!”

That’s…not really an insult in English. Maybe in a movie about pirates? But not these days. It’s vaguely rude, sure, but it’s just not used!

Not so in Indonesian. As a majority-Islam country, Indonesian people believe dogs are unclean. You won’t see many pet dogs or stray dogs in Indonesia for that reason. And that’s why calling somebody a dog is taken so seriously. In some situations, you might even see it self-censored, like anj*ng.

• Anak haram!
  “Illegitimate child!”

In Indonesian culture, specifically in Islam, having a child out of wedlock is a strong taboo. Therefore, calling somebody an anak haram is extremely serious as it insults their entire family.

• Bajingan!
  “Lowlife!”

Literally, bajingan is a street criminal, a petty thief, or a pickpocket. Crimes like that don’t happen often in Indonesia, and people are likely to take offense if you call them this word.

The rest of these are pretty standard and interchangeable—insults that work in English and Indonesian. As you can see, these normally wouldn’t be used in complete sentences.

• Gila kau!
  “You’re crazy!”
• Sialan!
  “You’re trash!”
• Bodoh sekali!
  “So stupid!”
• Kurang ajar!
  “You’re losing it!”

One thing to note here, on a social level: Learning insults in other languages is a lot of fun.

But that’s only because you lack the social upbringing to really know what it feels like to be called sialan or kurang ajar. You might know intellectually that they’re serious words, but you don’t really hold that feeling in your heart.

So the advice here is to rarely, if ever, joke around with insults or angry words in another language. Even if you’ve been immersed for years, all it takes is just one mistake for people to think you’re too touchy and rude to be friends with.

By the way, if you’re wondering “Is that it?” then, no, it’s not. There are other things that go beyond the severity of what we’ve discussed here, but they’re too obscene to print (in this article, at least).

Keep your eyes peeled for a special members-only offering of the juiciest Indonesian curse words, here at IndonesianPod101!

8. Say You’re Sorry

So did you end up going too far? It’s probably going to be alright. Indonesians are tolerant and forgiving of people’s mistakes, and you should definitely learn to be the same if you want to fit in.

In fact, we have a whole lesson on how to say sorry in Indonesian, so we won’t repeat everything here. But imagine yourself all heated up after having traded insults back and forth.

• Aku minta maaf.
  “I’m very sorry.”
• Aku salah.
  “I was wrong.”
• Aku tidak akan melakukan ini lagi.
  “I won’t do this again.”
• Aku minta maaf karena membuat kamu marah.
  “I’m sorry for making you mad.”
• Aku harap kamu bisa memaafkanku.
  “I hope you can forgive me.”

If you didn’t screw things up too badly, and your apology was genuine, then you may be lucky enough to hear these phrases.

• Ayo kita lupakan saja.
  “Let’s just forget about it.”
• Tidak apa-apa.
  “It’s alright.”

9. Conclusion

Hopefully by this point, you’ve gotten a satisfying glimpse into the dark side of Indonesian anger. Keep in mind that so much of how these words are used and received has to do with the tone of voice.

If you turn on a TV show (or more likely, a web series, thanks to broadcast regulations), you’ll probably hear words like this thrown around very frequently between friends.

You have to read the room and know your audience well if you want to speak like them—and that goes far beyond just insults.

At IndonesianPod101, we give you that extra insight into Indonesian culture to give you a sense of understanding. With our lessons, articles, and flagship podcast, you’ll naturally learn what’s right and wrong to say, every time.

Before you go, drop us a comment and let us know which of these Indonesian angry phrases is your favorite. What are common angry phrases in your language? We look forward to hearing from you!