Posts
« Words on the Pattern of Faa’il | Home | Kam: How Many »
Fi’l Mudaari’: Present and Future Tense
By ArabicTree | September 2, 2008
In Arabic, fi’l al-mudaari‘ (the present/future-tense verb) can represent either the present or the future tense verb. So the question arises: how do you know if it’s being used in a present or future tense?
For example, if someone says to you:
Does this mean “I am drinking tea” or “I will drink tea”? If you can see the person, no problem!–you can tell if they’re drinking tea or not right now. But what if you read a sentence like this in a book?
The answer is context; the same way Arabs (meaning people who speak and understand Arabic) understand without vowels, they understand tense by context. Subhanallah! What about the rest of us?
As it turns out, you can explicitly specify that the verb is present- or future-tense. Let’s go by example. Our original sentence was:
If we want to make it present-tense, we say:
The addition of al-aana (الانَ) means “now”; so you can translate this sentence as: “I am drinking tea right now.” Which makes it present-tense! Notice you could NOT say “I will drink tea right now”–it doesn’t make sense! So al-aana removes the ambiguity and makes it present-tense.
What about future tense? There are two ways you can achieve this:
- By the addition of the letter seen:
سَأَشرُبُ الشَايَ
The addition of seen makes it future tense; so you can translate as “I will drink tea.”
- By the addition of the word sawfa:
سَوفَ أَشرُبُ الشَايَ
The addition of sawfa makes it future tense; so you can translate as “I will drink tea.”
Both are equivalent, seen and sawfa–there’s no difference in the meaning. Also, unlike al-aana, you do not explicitly translate the seen or sawfa into a word (at least, in English).
To summarize: Mudaari‘ verbs can be present-tense or future tense; you can explicitly specify it as present-tense (by adding al-aana) or future-tense (by adding seen or sawfa).
Wallahu ‘alim.
Topics: Grammar, Intermediate |
September 4th, 2008 at 12:23 pm
A very useful post and very well constructed, Masha Allah.