Grammar

Tongan tense markers: naʻa, ʻoku, kuo and te

Tongan shows tense with one word in front of the verb. The verb itself does not change form to show tense: kai is "eat", "ate" and "eaten" all at once, and the word in front of it says which one you mean. There are four of these markers, and they all fill the same slot, so swapping one for another moves the sentence through time and leaves everything else standing.

Marker	Tense	Example	Meaning
naʻa	past	Naʻá ke kai.	You ate.
ʻoku	present	ʻOkú ke kai.	You eat.
kuo	perfect	Kuó ke kai.	You have eaten.
te	future	Té ke kai.	You will eat.

That is the answer in full. The rest of this page is the four markers one at a time, the two of them that change shape, and what happens to the pattern in the negative.

The verb does not move and does not change

English carries tense inside the verb, which is why "eat" becomes "ate" and "eaten" and why irregular verbs have to be memorised one at a time. Tongan puts the tense in a separate word and leaves the verb alone. A Tongan sentence opens with the marker, then the pronoun, then the verb, in that order.

Naʻá ku kai.
I ate.

ʻOku ou kai.
I eat.

Nothing about kai tells you the tense, and nothing ever will: no ending is added to it and no vowel inside it shifts. That is why there is no conjugation table on this page. Learn the four markers and every verb in the language is already conjugated.

naʻa, the past

Naʻa puts an event behind you and says nothing at all about how things stand now. It is the marker a story runs on.

Naʻá ke mohe.
You slept. (A past event, with no comment on the present.)

ʻoku, the present

With an action verb, ʻoku usually reads as a habit rather than as this exact moment: ʻOku ou kai. is "I eat", something you do regularly. Tongan has a separate way to say an action is in progress right now. With a descriptive word, ʻoku describes a state that holds at the moment of speaking.

ʻOkú ke mohe.
You sleep. (A general statement about what you do.)

kuo, the perfect, and the one thing to get right

This is the one place in the system worth slowing down for. Both markers describe something that has already happened, so the choice is not about when. It is about what the speaker is pointing at. Naʻa points at the event. Kuo points at the state the event left behind, which makes it the answer to a different question: what is different now?

Naʻá ku haʻu.
I came. (A past event.)

Kuó u haʻu.
I have arrived. (I was not here before. Now I am here.)

The same contrast holds with any verb. Sleeping is the clearest case, because the change of state is easy to picture.

Naʻa nau mohe.
They slept. (Reports a past event.)

Kuo nau mohe.
They have fallen asleep. (They were awake before. Now they are asleep.)

te, the future

Te marks what has not happened yet, and behaves like the other three: it takes the front slot and the verb stays put.

Té ke ʻalu.
You will go.

When the marker changes shape: naʻe and ʻe

The four forms above are the ones used when a pronoun follows the marker. Two of them take a second shape when no pronoun follows: past naʻa becomes naʻe, and future te becomes ʻe. It is one rule, and it turns up in two ordinary places.

The first is a subject that is a name rather than a pronoun. The name moves after the verb and takes ʻa, and the marker switches shape.

Naʻe hiva ʻa Sione.
Sione sang.

ʻE hiva ʻa Tēvita.
Tēvita will sing.

A weather verb has no subject at all, and takes the same shape for the same reason: nothing follows the marker.

Naʻe ʻuha.
It rained.

Saying it did not happen

The second consequence is the negative. To negate a sentence, ʻikai te goes between the tense marker and the pronoun, and the past and future markers move to their naʻe and ʻe forms.

ʻOku ʻikai té u fiefia.
I am not happy.

Naʻe ʻikai té u kai.
I did not eat.

When there is no pronoun to negate, the connector is ke instead of te, which is the same rule seen from the other side: te before a pronoun, ke before a bare verb.

ʻOku ʻikai ke ʻuha.
It is not raining.

Still, already, not yet

Tense says when. A second word, an aspect marker sitting between the tense marker and the verb, says what stage the action has reached: kei for still, ʻosi for already, teʻeki ai for not yet, toe for again. The tense marker keeps its own job while this happens.

ʻOkú ne kei mohe pē.
He is still sleeping.

Kuó ne ʻosi ʻalu.
He has already gone.

The one pronoun that changes with the marker

Pronouns sit between the marker and the verb and keep their form throughout, with a single exception. The word for "I" takes three shapes depending on which marker comes before it.

Marker	"I"	Example	Meaning
naʻa	ku	Naʻá ku kai.	I ate.
ʻoku	ou	ʻOku ou kai.	I eat.
kuo	u	Kuó u kai.	I have eaten.
te	u	Té u kai.	I will eat.

No other pronoun does this. The full set, including the dual forms and the two different words for "we", is lesson 2.

Practise the swap

Reading the four markers takes a minute. Reaching for the right one without stopping to think takes practice, so the drill below runs the swap until it is automatic, and the lessons behind it teach each piece in order.

The Tongan alphabet and pronunciation · Tongan greetings and what they mean · Tongan word order · Saying "not" in Tongan · Tongan possessives · The Tongan ko pattern