Taught in Lesson 15.
The rule
ini is this, itu is that. They follow the noun, and they come last.
| dom ini | this house |
| anak itu | that child |
| ca ini garam | this tea is hot |
| dom mi kabir ini | this big house of mine |
The order inside a noun phrase is now complete: noun → owner → adjective → this/that. Each piece is optional; the order never changes.
Standing alone
ini and itu can stand by themselves wherever a noun phrase stands. Before a noun they need es, like any subject:
| Ini es dom mi. | This is my house. |
| Itu es ke? | What is that? |
| Ini hao, itu mal. | This is good, that is bad. |
| Mi mau ini. Mi no mau itu. | I want this. I do not want that. |
| Mi mau kupi ini. | I want to buy this. |
This section said the subject until September 5, 2026, and three sentences were already using them as objects — two of them in the phrasebook, where wanting this and not that is one of the lines a traveller actually needs. Nothing was wrong with the sentences: a rule page had described half of what its own rule does. The last two rows are those sentences, so the page now shows both slots.
The pattern you already knew
| this | here | that | there |
|---|---|---|---|
| ini | sini | itu | situ |
sini and situ have been in the language since Lessons 8 and 10. ini and itu are what is left when the s- comes off. Indonesian built them the same way, and Amadunia inherits the set whole.
Today, tonight
din ini is “this day” — today. rat ini is tonight. din itu is that day. No new words for any of them.
Sources
Indonesian and Malay ini / itu; Tagalog ito. Austronesian, some three hundred million speakers, and the same family that gave the language kita, sini, situ, anak and its plural rule.
Why this and not the alternatives
Why after the noun. Every other modifier in the language follows its noun — the owner, the adjective. A demonstrative before the noun would be the one modifier out of place.
Why last in the phrase. Because it points at the whole thing. dom mi kabir ini is “this [big house of mine]”; the pointing wraps everything else.
| Candidate | Source | Reason rejected |
|---|---|---|
| bu / su | Turkish | bu is a minimal pair with du, ba, yu |
| to | Russian to, Japanese sore | to is a minimal pair with ta |
| na | Chinese nà 那 | minimal pair with ba, ca, no, ta, ya |
| ili | Russian ili (or), Swahili ile | ili is a minimal pair with ini |
| este / ese | Spanish | one family; and ese would sit one sound from es |
| yah / vah | Hindi | the alphabet has no v |
| kore / sore | Japanese | clean — neither collides with anything, and sore is two sounds from sol, not one — but one family |
A note on checking
dom mi kabir ini is a noun phrase and ini is last in it. But Dom ini kabir — “this house is big” — has kabir outside the phrase, as the sentence’s predicate. The two look identical to a machine, so check.py cannot test the rule in general; it tests only the case that has no predicate reading, an owner after ini or itu. An audit on September 3, 2026 found no violation of either kind.
Open questions
- A third distance (that over there, Indonesian sana, Japanese are) is not provided. situ covers it for now.