The Auxiliary Verbs Shall And Should In Twi | Learn Twi With Opoku | Asante Twi | Twi For Beginners

This lesson aims at helping people to know how to say shall or will and should in Twi or Ghanaian language

DIFFERENCE BETWEEN SHOULD AND SHALL/WILL IN TWI
In Twi we do not have singular or plural verbs.
What do I mean? Well, let me make this example. In English we can say he goes or they go. You see - goes is a singular verb while go is a plural verb. In twi we don’t have such a rule. Singular and plural nouns go with the same verb. So in Twi if we say “they go”, we will also say “he go”. Thus both plural and singular verbs take a verb in the same structure.
I’m saying this because in Twi if you want to say “he shall” and “they will” you will use the same auxiliary verb. That is to say will and shall are the same in Twi.

Haven said that, let’s try to see the difference between shall/will and should in Twi.
It’s very simple, while shall/will is denoted by “bɛ” should is denoted by ɛsɛ sɛ/ɛtwa sɛ/ɛwɔ sɛ

So if I want to say :
You will drink milk - Wobɛnom milk
He shall drink – Ɔbɛnom milk
They will drink – Wɔbɛnom milk

But note: For I shall drink milk
I’ll say “mɛnom” milk


Now let’s talk about should.
As I said should is denoted by ɛsɛ sɛ / ɛtwa sɛ /ɛwɔ sɛ and even ɛhia sɛ.
So how do we say what we’ve already learnt/learned using should:

You should drink – Ɛsɛ sɛ/ɛtwa sɛ /ɛwɔ sɛ wonom
He should drink – Ɛtwa sɛ ɔnom
They should drink – Ɛtwa sɛ /ɛsɛ sɛ wɔnom
I should drink - Ɛsɛ sɛ/ɛtwa sɛ /ɛwɔ sɛ me nom

Bonus: Do you know that you can also use ɛsɛ sɛ/ɛtwa sɛ /ɛwɔ sɛ for have to, has to, need to etc?
Yes you can. For instance, if you wanna say
I need to go home, you can say Ɛsɛ sɛ/ɛtwa sɛ /ɛwɔ sɛ mekɔ fie. I have to drink milk – Ɛsɛ sɛ menom milk.