The Future with 'bai'

01

Two Positions

bai can stand at the very front of the sentence, before the subject, or immediately after the subject. Both are entirely normal.

• Bai mi go na sekim.

  I'll go and check.

• Bai yu wokim wanem samting tumora?

  What will you do tomorrow?

• Mi bai go long haus.

  I'll go home.

• Mi bai waswas pastaim.

  I'll have a wash first.

What it cannot do is come after the verb. Whichever position you choose, bai is in front of the verb phrase, and the predicate marker i follows it rather than the other way round.

• Bai em i no inap bruk.

  It won't be able to break.

• Em bai i lapun nating.

  He will simply grow old.

02

The Verb Is Untouched

There is no future form of the verb to learn. go is go whether it happened yesterday, happens daily or will happen next year - only the small word in front of it changes.

• Mi laik go long haus nau.

  I want to go home now.

• Mi bai go long haus.

  I'll go home.

03

In Conditions and Predictions

bai regularly marks the result half of an "if" sentence, and it is the ordinary way of stating what is going to happen.

• Sapos yu no hariap, balus bai lusim yu.

  If you don't hurry, the plane will leave you.

• Krismas bilong mi bai seventin.

  I'll be seventeen.

04

In Questions

Questions need no rearrangement. bai keeps whichever position it would have had in the statement.

• Bai yu kam bek wok long tumora?

  Will you come back to work tomorrow?

• Bai yu wokim wanem samting tumora?

  What will you do tomorrow?

05

With No Subject at All

In a statement that something will exist, bai can stand at the front with nothing between it and the predicate marker.

• Bai i gat san na nait.

  There will be day and night.

06

Not Always Needed

Where the time is already clear from something else in the sentence - a word like tumora, or the situation itself - bai is often simply left out. It is a marker you reach for when the futurity would otherwise be in doubt, not an obligatory ending.