Lesson 29 – الدَّرْسُ التَّاسِعُ وَالْعِشْرُونَ

Tenses of the Verb (Past, Present and Future Tense In Arabic) - زَمَن الفِعْل (الماضي، وَالْمُضارِع، والمُسْتَقْبَل)

Continued

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• In the previous parts of this lesson we discussed the past, present and future tenses and their forms. Now we are going to discuss the words that indicate these tenses.
• There are words relating to time periods that indicate the tense being used.

1-    The past tense الزمن الماضي

• The most well-known words indicating the past tense include yesterday أمس, since قبل/منذ as in:

2-    The present tense الزمن الحاضر (المضارع)

• The key words indicating the present tense include now الآن which is the only word that indicates the time of speaking. The same applies to the expression (at this moment في هذا الوقت). The word today اليوم sometimes expresses the present i.e. an action that is happening today at the time of speaking. However, it also sometimes indicates the future, as in the following examples:

• In the two above examples, the meaning is that the verb (action) is to happen today, but not at the time of speaking, rather after some time – e.g. in an hour or more after the time of speaking.
• The present verb is also used to express continuity of the verb – e.g. an action that is performed daily.  The key word indicating the continuity is the word “every” كل + a time adverb, such as every day, week, month … etc:

3-    The Future Tense زمن المُستقبل:    

• These are some words (above) that indicate the future tense. These words include (tomorrow غدا) which clearly indicates future. Another word is (after بعد + any word indicating time) such as: after an hour, after a day, after a month, after a year). A third word is (next القادم) preceded by a word indicating time such as: