Lesson 29 – الدَّرْسُ التَّاسِعُ وَالْعِشْرُونَ
Tenses of the Verb (Past, Present and Future)- زَمَن الفِعْل (الماضي ،وَالْمُضارِع ،والمُسْتَقْبَل)
Continued
- We are still in lesson twenty nine of our free Arabic language course. This Arabic course with images and audios will help you learn Arabic.
- Tenses in Arabic are divided into three types: past, present and future.
- The PAST means that the action happened before the time of speaking. The past verb is always used to express the past tense [already discussed in Lesson 28]. See the following examples:
Sentence | Sentence (English) | Verb (Arabic) | Verb (English) |
Did your brother study this book? | Studied | ||
I did not write my homework yesterday. | Wrote | ||
Allah sent prophets to caution people. | Sent |
- We notice that the meaning of the three above-mentioned verbs happened before the time of speaking, and this is the past tense.
- The present verb means that the action is happening at the time of speaking. If we say: Muhammad is eating محمد يأكل, this means that he is eating right at the time of speaking, not before or after.
- The present tense is expressed in Arabic through the present verb we studied in Lesson 28. We have already learned how to formulate various types of the present verb, as follows:
Sentence (English) | Sentence | Verb (Arabic) | Verb (English) |
My brother is hanging out in the mosque | To hang out | ||
Work starts at 10:00 o'clock. | To start | ||
The engineer is repairing the television. | To repair | ||
The child is damaging his toys. | To spoil/damage | ||
The month is approaching its end. | To approach | ||
Your opinion is far from true | To go far | ||
Engineers are extracting oil from underground. | To extract | ||
The traveler is inquiring about the time of the plane takeoff. | To inquire |
- As we learnt in the previous lesson, the present verb always begins with one of the following letters: (/أ/، /يـ/، /تـ/، /نـ/)
- The future means that the action happens after the time of speaking. If one says: Muhammad will go to work سَيَذْهَبُ مُحَمَّدٌ إلَى الْعَمَلِ, this means that he will go after some time (an hour, day, week, etc).
Sentence | Sentence (English) | Transliteration / Translation | The verb in the future | The verb in the present |
The new academic year will start after a month. | sa-yabda’u (will) start | |||
We will perform the Eid Prayer after sunrise. | sa-yuŝalli | |||
The diligent student will succeed | sa-yanĵaħu (will) succeed | |||
The judge is going to settle disputes among people fairly. | sa-yaqđī | |||
The strong amongst us shall help the week. | sa-yusāξidu | |||
The children are going to wear the new clothes. | sa-yalbasu (will) wear |
- Having understood the meaning of the future tense, we will learn how to formulate the verb in this tense.
- In the previous table, we notice that there are two verbs: the first is يَبْدَأ and its future form سَيَبْدَأُ. The future form of the verb is the same as the present tense with a pre-fixed letter seen (سَ) before the verb in the present tense:
sa- + the verb in the present form |
- Another way of converting the present tense into the future tense is by adding the word /sawfa/:
sawfa + the present form of the verb |
- The difference between sa- ( سـ ) and sawfa ( سوف ) is that the former indicates that the action will happen immediately or within a short time [near future] but the latter means that the action will happen in a longer time [distant future], i.e. there is a long period separating the time of speaking and the time of the future action, as in the following examples:
Sentence | Sentence (English) | Translation | Future tense verb | Present tense verb |
أنا سَأُسَافِرُ الآن وَلَكِنِّي سَوْفَ أَعُودُ بَعْدَ سَنَةٍ | I am going to travel now, but I will return after a year. | (will) return | ||
I will sleep after I watch the film | (will) sleep | |||
يقول الوَزِيرُ أنه سَوْف يَقْضِي عَلَى البِطَالةِ خِلالَ خَمْس ِ سَنَوَات ٍ | The minister says he will put an end to unemployment in five years. | (will) spend | ||
I will wash my clothes in the weekend. | (will) wash |