Lesson 5 — Grammatical Topic — Future tense with no–

Samala marks the future tense with the prefix no–.
This prefix is translated in English with "will" or with some form of the expression "to be going to."
This prefix goes before person and number markers:
	no–k–tap	"I will go in"	or  "I'm going to enter"
	no–p–kuti	"you will see"	or  "you're going to see"
	no––tuhuy he?	"will it rain?"	or  "is it going to rain?"

How would you translate these phrases with no–?
Hold the mouse over the Samala phrase to see the answer.
	no–k–it		no–s–iy–aqnp he?
	no–k–iy–an		no––i–expe ha ii
	no–p–iy–utanin		no––i–tap
	no––o ha uwumu		no–p–i–aqtikat

Special form of ini– when a vowel comes before it

Top

In spoken English we use contractions with the negative: a contraction is when two words are run together into a form that's easier to pronounce.
For example we usually pronounce "she is" as "she's" and "do not" as "don't."
In Samala you do something similar. When a prefix that ends in a vowel — such as no– "future" — comes before ini–, the first vowel of ini– drops out and the negative marker becomes –ni–:
	no–ini–k–kuti nonikuti		"I won't watch"
	no–ini–p–aqtikat nonipaqtikat		"you won't need [it]"
	no–ini–s–oyin nonihoyin		"it won't be black"
	no–ini–s–i–esqen nonisisesqen		"the two of them won't ask"
More examples of the contracted form of no– plus ini–:
	nonikyuxpan	"I won't be sick"
	nonipmxxn	"you won't be hungry"
	noniit ha o	"he won't find water"
	nonisitamay ha pt	"they won't forget your name"

Top