A: “Sejak awal sudah kamu benci pria itu.”
B: “Pada awalnya sudah kamu benci pria itu.”
Do these sentences mean the same?

I thought “sejak awal” means “since the beginning” and thereby sentence A suggests that you hated that man from the beginning, and now you still do so. The negative feeling continues.
On the other hand, “pada awalnnya” means “initially”. So, sentence B could be interpreted as you have NOT hated that man anymore. Your first impression on him would be wrong.

I also would like to ask you whether I could swap the word order of “SUDAH kamu benci” with “kamu SUDAH benci”.

Answers

hasnadinar

19 Jul 2021

Featured answer

Indonesian
Javanese Near fluent

@MsFixer sejak awal means since long ago/in the first placr while pada awalnya means at first.
So sentence A means "you have hated that man since the very start" (you still hate him now. It could mean having an inherent hatred for him or feeling hate after he did something that makes you upset).

Sentence B means "at first you have already hated that man" (you hated him in the first place. Before he did something that makes you upset, you have already hated him, that's why sudah is used. It could also mean you hated him at first, but not anymore).

Adding to the above reply, sudah in front of the pronoun gives a more poetic nuance and it is used mainly in written work (we say sudah behind the pronoun in daily conversations and most of the time we omit s to say udah). But somehow those two sentences sound weird to me. I wonder if they were retrieved from Tatoeba?

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Deleted user

19 Jul 2021

1) yes your interpretation is correct!

2) you cannot swap them, but you can use both depending on the other part of the sentence. "kamu sudah benci" is more correct but it sounds weird, you need to add more words afterwards.

e.g. :
dia sudah kamu benci sejak awal
kamu sudah benci dia sejak awal
both means you have hated him since the beginning. both are correct but we use the second one more often!.

See a translation

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abdur-rohman

19 Jul 2021

Indonesian

@MsFixer
Your interpretation for sentence A is correct. However, your sentence B is unnatural. We usually say "Pada awalnya" WITHOUT "sudah".

Pada awalnya, kamu benci pria itu.

It is this sentence that clearly matches your interpretation for sentence B.

As for the change in the order of "sudah", for transitive verbs it's no problem, but when you use verb with prefix "me", you should omit it.

Saya sudah menulis surat itu.
Sudah saya tulis surat itu.
(I wrote the letter.)

Apakah kamu sudah menutup pintu depan?
Apakah sudah kamu tutup pintu depan?
(Have you shut the front door?)

Dia sudah minum kopinya.
Sudah dia minum kopinya.
(He drank his coffee).

However, you cannot swap the order of "sudah" in intransitive verbs.

Dia sudah tidur. (correct)
Sudah dia tidur. (incorrect)

Mereka sudah pergi. (correct)
Sudah mereka pergi. (incorrect)

In addition, "sudah" is not naturally used in verbs that relate to emotion, such as cinta, benci, senang, sedih, kaget.

Dia sedih. (natural)
Dia sudah sedih. (unnatural)

Aku cinta kamu (natural)
Aku sudah cinta kamu (unnatural).

When you want to say that you love someone in the past, but now you do not love her anymore, you can use "dulu".

Saya dulu cinta dia. Sekarang tidak.

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hasnadinar

19 Jul 2021

Indonesian
Javanese Near fluent

@MsFixer sejak awal means since long ago/in the first placr while pada awalnya means at first.
So sentence A means "you have hated that man since the very start" (you still hate him now. It could mean having an inherent hatred for him or feeling hate after he did something that makes you upset).

Sentence B means "at first you have already hated that man" (you hated him in the first place. Before he did something that makes you upset, you have already hated him, that's why sudah is used. It could also mean you hated him at first, but not anymore).

Adding to the above reply, sudah in front of the pronoun gives a more poetic nuance and it is used mainly in written work (we say sudah behind the pronoun in daily conversations and most of the time we omit s to say udah). But somehow those two sentences sound weird to me. I wonder if they were retrieved from Tatoeba?

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MsFixer

20 Jul 2021

Japanese

@abdur-rohman @hasnadinar
and the anonymous user,

Thank you for your answers. Sentence A was modified by me based on an Indonesian native speaker’s translation without changing the crux of grammatical points. I didn’t believe “sejak awal” in the original Indonesian sentence is the right translation of “initially” in this context. It’s good to know that all of you confirmed my understanding.
I came across the phrase “pada awalnya” in different contexts. I think “pada awalnya” is the one for “You initially hated the man” as well.

I’m still struggling with “sudah”. “Sudah”, “harus”, “pernah” and “dapat” etc. are followed by a pronoun and preceded by “yang”. But I have never seen the order of words like sentence A because it is different from the “yang” pattern. Your answers give me much deeper insights than I knew of.