The Simple Future Tense in Twi | Daakye Kabea | Twi Grammar

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The present lesson concludes the series on Twi verb tenses and their main types. We have, so far, looked at the simple present tense and the simple past tense. Let’s now turn our attention to the simple future tense.

The Simple Future Tense

The simple future tense is the form of a verb that is used to talk about things that have not happened yet. You use a verb’s future tense when you want to talk about events that is expected/likely to happen in the future.

In English, the future tense is formed by inserting will before a verb’s root form. Let’s look at some English examples.

–> I will climb.

–> Kofi will dance to the music.

–> She is the woman I will marry.

The Simple Future Tense in Twi | Daakye Kabea

To form the simple future tense in Twi, simply prefix bɛ- to any verb’s original form (the root) and, voila! So, you take a verb in its simple tense form and attach bɛ- to its beginning and you have its future tense form.

If the subject of a Twi verb in its future form is a pronoun, you need to combine that subject pronoun with the future tense verb into a single word in writing. If the subject is a noun, you need to separate it from the verb and its future tense marker bɛ-.

1. Wobɛsoa (bɛ + soa)

    You will carry.

2. Tweneboa bɛsom Nyame (bɛ + som)

    Tweneboa will worship God.

3. bɛforo dua no (bɛ + foro)

    They will climb the tree.

4. Nyame bɛyɛ (bɛ + yɛ)

    God will do.

5. Ɔbɛfa (bɛ + fa)

    He/she will take.

The exception to the above future tense formation rule has to do with the first person singular subject pronoun “me (I)”. If the subject of a future tense verb is me (I), some forms of contractions happen: me reduces to m, and reduces to ɛ. So, instead of mebɛ for “I will”, we get .  

Some examples:

6. Mɛkɔ sukuu (me + bɛ + kɔ = mɛkɔ)

    I will go to school.

7. Mɛda ntɛm (me + bɛ + da = mɛda)

    I will sleep early

8. Mɛsom wo (me + bɛ + som = mɛsom)

    I will worship you.

9. Mɛnom nsuo (me + bɛ + nom = mɛnom)

    I will drink water.

10. Mɛsa adowa (me + bɛ + sa = mɛsa)

      I will dance adowa.

And this brings us to the end of the lesson. In our subsequent lessons, we are going to explore yet another important property of verbs. Before that, though, do make sure you fully understand the three main verb tenses we’ve looked at, and, most importantly, how we arrive at their respective forms in Twi.

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Yaw
STEPHEN AWIBA, known by his students as YAW, is the founding editor of LEARNAKAN.COM and LEARNAKANDICTIONARY.COM. He was born and raised in Kumasi, the Ashanti regional capital of Ghana, where Akan (Asante Twi) is spoken as the first language. He holds a Bachelor's degree in Linguistics and Theatre Arts from the University of Ghana and an MPhil in English Linguistics and Language Acquisition from the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU).

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