Note 22 — Chapter III · RELIGIOUS AND MAGICAL BELIEFS
Reading edition
It may be noted that in the Andamanese languages there is no future tense of the verb, and it is often very difficult to know whether a speaker is referring to the present or to the future. Further, although there is a past tense, a native often uses the present tense in a narrative relating to the past, so that a statement relating to the past and one relating to the future may have exactly the same grammatical form. Mr Ellis, writing in the Journal of the Philological Society (1882) from information supplied by Mr Man, gives a verbal suffix -ngabo denoting the future in the Aka-Bea language. Mr Portman points out that this is an error. (Notes on the Languages of the South Andaman, p. 88.) ↑