Time and Tenses

Important: Different dialects may have different grammar rules for expressing time. Check with your local language expert.

There are currently no known or agreed-up names for the days of the week, the months of the year, or the seasons of the year, or how to indicate the calendar date or year.

How to indicate past and future tense

When deciding whether to include the past or future tense, ask yourself how necessary firmly placing an event in the past or future is for someone to understand the story/song/etc. Mandos are supposed to assume a lot about time based on the context. One way to think about it (that's good for nearly all situations): If someone using Mando'a can't see the actions unfolding before their eyes, they ought to take as true that the actions someone else is describing happened some time in the past unless told otherwise.

If you wish to indicate that an entire story takes place in the past or future, start the story with vaal (during) plus the time period in which it happens. When the part of the story that takes place in that time period ends, indicate the switch with vaal and a different time period.

If the story takes place only in the present, it is not necessary to indicate the time frame.

Do not use ganar (to have, to possess) as a helper with other verbs. If  you want to talk about actions that happened in the past that either affected other past actions (the past perfect of English grammar) or still has relevance now (the present perfect of English grammar), use appropriate time markers (see below) to convey that information.

Where does time information go in a sentence?

Put this information wherever it is least likely to cause confusion due the fact that adjectives and adverbs look/sound the same and that words are often dropped for brevity. 

Nakar'tuur (Unkown day)

For some thoughts about nakar'tuur, see this post in the Ba'jurir Mando'a server:
https://discord.com/channels/792811531674714162/920335804788776981/920336028882071623 

See also ...

After/Then

Before

Speculation about how to respond to Tion'tuur?

Some time words and phrases

Time markers

These can be used with a single sentence or at the beginning of a longer story. This list is not exhaustive; vaal can be used with other time words as necessary for the story. Note that some of these use fan constructions.

Using tense particles

The following past and future tense markers are rarely used in the Mando'a language. These markers are used on a single sentence; see above for how to set an entire story in the past or future. Do not use tense markers with the command particle (ke).

To use these particles, put the appropriate one in front of the related verb. Attach ru to the front of the active verb with a beten if the verb begins with a consonant or r' if the verb begins with a vowlel. Put ven in front of the active verb, but do not use a beten. Tense particles are only placed with verbs, never with nouns, adjectives, etc. (though they appear within certain existing words). Because of this, use cuyir (to be) with the tense particle, even if you would normally drop it. Put the tense particle in front of the negative particle (ne, nu, n'); do not attach with a beten regardless of which tense particle you are using. If your local dialect has a different way of using these markers, follow that dialect's grammar rules.

Examples:

Some ways to express points in time

if: meh

at the point in the past when: use sha ca'nara plus ru with a conjugated verb.

any time when: use sha ca'nara plus a conjugated verb.

as soon as: sha ca'nara plus ven with a conjugated verb.

Seasons

There are no canonical ways to discuss seasons, and there is much disagreement among most fans about the reference point for naming seasons.

One set of ideas that mostly use the base dictionary:

An example of two seasons that mostly use the base dictionary: