Ghadi the word of the future

In Darija when speaking in the future tense, the sentence is formed differently. You see in English, you would use a verb like “will’ or “going” to indicate a future tense. In Darija the contruction works a bit differently.

When wanting to speak about future events in Darija, there is a special word that is used. The word is Ghadi. Even if you don’t know a single word in Darija, if you hear this word, you know that the person is speaking about the future.  Unlike English that uses verbs like “will” or “going”, Darija will use the word Ghadi and this will automatically transforms the sentence into the future tense.

Example

Here is an example of the usage of ghadi – ghadi nshufk ghadda – I will see you tomorrow

The interesting thing about this word is that it can also be a phrase used as a verb with the translation of going.  fayn ghadi – Where are you going?

The word is also shortened to ghad or gha. When the word is shortened it is attached to the verb which gives the verb a future tense. Personally I use the word ghadi because for me to separate the word rather than prefixing it to another word  is a lot easier.  The prefixes ghad and gha will indicate the future tense but since Darija is spoken so quickly (at least to me) sometimes you may not hear the prefix, luckily most times when speaking about future events you can also use the context of other words being used in the sentence. Words like tomorrow, later, after can help you determine whether the speaker is saying something about a future action.

Word List