Professor Dave here, let’s learn the future tense.
We’ve learned about a lot of different tenses that express past actions, so now it’s time
to learn how to express events happening in the future.
In these kinds of situations, English uses phrases like: I will, I shall, or I am going to.
All of these expressions are skipped in Italian, because they are already built into the verbal form.
Also, in Italian, the present tense can sometimes be used even to express future ideas, especially
when discussing things that are definitely going to happen.
But in spite of this, the future tense is also widely used, especially to describe situations
of possibility, assumption, or expectation.
In fact, Italian even has a specific construction called futuro di probabilita`, which is especially
common in colloquial conversation.
We will look at that one later, first let’s examine the normal future tense.
The conjugation of this tense is not very difficult.
First of all, there is only one set of endings for all three conjugations.
The same endings will even be used for irregular verbs.
That’s a rare treat in Italian, so rejoice for just a moment.
Once the euphoria subsides, let’s go through the forms.
Let’s examine one verb from each conjugation, ballare, scrivere, and dormire.
To use the future tense of these verbs, take the infinitive and drop the RE.
Then, the first conjugation will modify the A into an E, the second conjugation will keep
the E, and the third conjugation will keep the I.
Now all of these will use the same set of endings.
As we said, all verbs will follow this pattern for the conjugation.
There are a couple irregular verbs where the base will witness some small changes, mainly
the elimination of one vowel before the ending.
Verbs ending in CI plus ARE or GI plus ARE will drop the final “i” in front of the
future endings.
Verbs ending in CARE or GARE will add an “h” in front of the future ending, in order to
maintain the hard sound.
Lastly, a few are simply irregular, and these are the usual suspects.
For these, the thematic vowel A does not change into an E.
Now to put things together, the application of this tense is pretty straightforward, but
it is widely used, so it will be important to go over.
First, you would use this when discussing possible future events.
Second, you can describe your future plans.
Next, you can make personal predictions.
You can also express doubt.
You can make promises.
You can politely admit something.
And lastly, you can use it with “if clauses of reality”, which we will see later, but
for one example:
So those are the basics regarding future tense.
Let’s check comprehension.