# Future anterior



## hadronic

Hi,

How do you translate future anterior in Hebrew ? "I will have written", etc...
Would you say something like כתבתי מחר, ie, perfect + a word expressing future time frame ?

Example phrases :
- when you come, I will have finished.
- you will have done your best ! But I don't think you can change it.

Thx!


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## arielipi

It converges into future, both sides of the sentence.

Or: a time frame on the one side and on the other side a present progressive verb/ shem pe'ula

עד שנגיע הביתה אכתוב את זה
עד שנגיע הביתה אספיק לכתוב זאת
עד שנגיע הביתה אני כבר אירדם


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## hadronic

Does that last sentence mean "by the time you arrive, I will already have slept", or "I will already be sleeping"? I would rather understand the latter.


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## airelibre

I will already have fallen asleep, I think.


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## hadronic

Ok, so concretely "I will already be sleeping"


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## ystab

hadronic said:


> Ok, so concretely "I will already be sleeping"



עד שנגיע הביתה, אני כבר אישן.


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## hadronic

Exactly, here is the problem.
Arielipi chose נרדם which is change-of-state verb. In other words, its past tense is almost identical in meaning to the present tense of the statal verb ישן (if I fell asleep, it means that I sleep).
That said, עד שנגיע הביתה כבר אירדם and עד שנגיע הביתה כבר אישן both have the same meaning, or more precisely describe the state of affair : my eyes will be closed.
The primary question would be to translate : when you come home, I will have slept already (my eyes will be open).
i would have thought that statal vs. change-of-state here would have helped, but it doesn't.
So how would you sort this out ?


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## ystab

If it were another verb, I'd rephrase it this way: כשתגיע הביתה אני כבר אסיים לנקות/לאכול/פעלים מן הסוג הזה.
In this case, since being awake means that one has already slept, I'd write כשתגיע הביתה אני כבר אהיה ער. This is because לסיים לישון doesn't sound right.

Maybe someone else can think of a better phrasing.

One more thing, in general, the perfect aspect nuances are quite difficult to express in Hebrew.


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## arielipi

לישון is like the regular/deep sleep while להירדם is a change of state - awake to not awake; more precisely to be radum is to be without conscience, and that is why a person is murdam in surgeries.


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## hadronic

And what about אספיק לישון , as arielipi suggested earlier in another context ?


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## hadronic

arielipi said:


> לישון is like the regular/deep sleep while להירדם is a change of state - awake to not awake.



I think everybody agrees.


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## berndf

It seems we have now established a word-around to convey the meaning of _has fallen asleep_ but not yet answered the original question.

In Biblical Hebrew you could use the past tense/perfect conjugation to express the perfect aspect and leave the tense meaning to context. Example:
_וּבֵרַכְתָּ אֶת-יְהוָה אֱלֹהֶיךָ, עַל-הָאָרֶץ הַטֹּבָה אֲשֶׁר נָתַן-לָךְ..._  =  _... and you will praize/have praized YHWH thy god in the good land that he will have given to you._

I suppose this is not an option in Modern Hebrew, right?


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## trigel

berndf said:
			
		

> וְאָכַלְתָּ, וְשָׂבָעְתָּ-- וּבֵרַכְתָּ אֶת-יְהוָה אֱלֹהֶיךָ, עַל-הָאָרֶץ הַטֹּבָה אֲשֶׁר נָתַן-לָךְ... = ... and thou wilt/shalt eat and be satiated, and thou wilt/shalt praise/have praised YHWH thy God in the good land that he will have given to thee.



AFAIK וּבֵרַכְתָּ can be interpreted as waw-consecutive + suffix conjugation = future narrative and translated as such, perfectness/perfectiveness-neutral. The נָתַן is more ambiguous (=has given/will have given), but considering the context ("For the LORD thy God is bringing thee into a good land...") the speaker seems to mean that God has already given the land at the time of the utterance. Whatever the correct interpretation of biblical tense-aspect forms, I would agree about Modern Hebrew.


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## hadronic

I think berndf was talking about the נתן part, wasn't he ?


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## origumi

berndf said:


> It seems we have now established a word-around to convey the meaning of _has fallen asleep_ but not yet answered the original question.


I don't think we can do any better, there's no such grammatical form in modern Hebrew. The three alternatives in arielipi's post #2 are good, other can be proposed.


> וְאָכַלְתָּ, וְשָׂבָעְתָּ-- וּבֵרַכְתָּ אֶת-יְהוָה אֱלֹהֶיךָ, עַל-הָאָרֶץ הַטֹּבָה אֲשֶׁר נָתַן-לָךְ


נתן can be interpreted as _has given_ _/ gave_, not necessarily as _will have given_. Onqelos translates it to וְתֵיכוֹל, וְתִסְבַּע--וּתְבָרֵיךְ יָת יְיָ אֱלָהָךְ, עַל אַרְעָא טָבְתָא *דִּיהַב* לָךְ. Aramaic דיהב means [that he] _has given / gave_. Deuteronomy 8:10 (פרשת עקב) is indeed just before the Israelites cross river Jordan toward the promised land, and yet the decision to grant them the land is already completed thus past simple or past perfect do the job.

(seems that I repeat Trigel's post)


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## berndf

hadronic said:


> I think berndf was talking about the נתן part, wasn't he ?


Yes.


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## arielipi

berndf said:


> Yes.



ברצוני לחזק את ידיו של אוריגאמי האמונות במלאכת הקודש של דיבור נקי וללא כחל ושרק.

and more srsly there arent perfects in hebrew; that is why many israelis struggle with english imo.


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## hadronic

I see that after 2 years I'm still struggling with this .... How would you translate "will you have eaten?" as in "Let's meet tomorrow at 9pm. -- Will you have eaten? (or shall we eat together? )".
Would this be OK :  תספיק לאכול?


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## airelibre

hadronic said:


> I see that after 2 years I'm still struggling with this .... How would you translate "will you have eaten?" as in "Let's meet tomorrow at 9pm. -- Will you have eaten? (or shall we eat together? )".
> Would this be OK :  תספיק לאכול?


That doesn't sound right to me. That sounds like "stop eating", or "will you stop eating?". I admit I don't know how to translate this directly in a literal way, I would personally avoid this and say אתה הולך לאכול לפני?


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## hadronic

Be careful, I wrote תספיק, not תפסיק..


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## airelibre

hadronic said:


> Be careful, I wrote תספיק, not תפסיק..


Sorry, I wasn't paying attention . I'm not sure about that either, let's see what the native speakers say.


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## ystab

hadronic said:


> I see that after 2 years I'm still struggling with this .... How would you translate "will you have eaten?" as in "Let's meet tomorrow at 9pm. -- Will you have eaten? (or shall we eat together? )".
> Would this be OK :  תספיק לאכול?


תספיק לאכול? is another way to say will you manage to eat by then (so we will not have dinner together).

אתה כבר תאכל עד אז can mean both, so we will have and so we won't have dinner, and tonnation and context come into effect here.

If you say, בוא ניפגש בתשע, או שכבר תאכל עד אז? context suggests that you are expecting to have dinner with your counterpart.

In colloquial language, I would say, אתה כבר תהיה אחרי האוכל? But that too depends on tonnation.


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## amikama

I agree with ystab.

Also:
בוא ניפגש בתשע מחר. האם תאכל לפני (הפגישה)?‏


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## hadronic

I didn't know the expression "כבר אחרי האוכל", it seems super convenient and returns a lot of Google occurrences. 
תאכל לפני?  is also a great "solution" (to a non-existent problem in an Israeli mind, I agree, you don't walk around and lament to the absence of future anterior  ) 
Thank you!


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