Lesson 15 Akan (The future tense)
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A second reading (by Michelle Nor Ismat, a native speaker)
All the above examples show the use of akan for the future tense. Simple, isn't it as there are no conjugations to learn as in French, Spanish or Italian! Just one word akan to use before the verb to indicate that it is something that is going to happen in the future.
As already explained in Lesson 4 the pronoun "dia" (third person singular) can refer to a woman as well as a man. Thus Dia akan datang esok can mean "He will come tomorrow" or, if we are talking about a woman, "She will come tomorrow". I might not be repeating this each time in future. So even when dia is translated as "he" please bear in mind that it could just as well stand for "she" if it is a woman we are talking about.
You might have learnt the word bertemu which is a synonym for berjumpa and therefore means "to meet" someone but it is much more formal than berjumpa. Thus if President Obama were to meet Prime Minister Najib we would likely use bertemu but if you were to meet your friend, better use berjumpa or simply jumpa (without the prefix which makes it even less formal). By the way "See you" or "So long" in Malay is Jumpa lagi!
Since we are talking about the future it is time to learn the following:
"Next week" is minggu hadapan or minggu depan, depan being the short form of hadapan.
"Next month" is bulan hadapan or bulan depan.
"Next year" is tahun hadapan or tahun depan.
In all the above cases the Indonesians prefer to use the shortened word depan, thus minggu depan, bulan depan and tahun depan respectively for next week, next month and next year.
It will make your learning much easier if you will just remember that since di hadapan means "in front of" so evidently the word hadapan in the above three sentences denote something that is forthcoming, something that has not arrived yet.
As for "last week", "last month" and "last year" we say minggu lalu, bulan lalu and tahun lalu respectively both in Malaysia and Indonesia. You might also hear some people saying minggu lepas, bulan lepas and tahun lepas instead. And if you should come across Juli silam in an Indonesian newspaper it simply means "last July". As in all languages, there are often several ways of saying the same thing.
By the way, "weekend" is hujung minggu which is logical since the word hujung alone means the "end" (most extreme part) of something.
"Will it rain?" is simply translated as Akan hujankah?
I hope you will not need to use the next sentence during your stay in Malaysia but learn it anyway in case you have a bad experience. The sentence is Saya akan panggil polis and it means "I am going to call the police" (and hopefully your knowledge of Malay will deter the criminal!) In this case it's the immediate future but in Malay it's still the same word akan that is to be used.