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Humanities LibreTexts

5.03: Il futuro semplice

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Simple future

We use the future tense to say what we will do, what we are going to do, or what will happen. Italians use it especially to make any kind of prediction or forecast:

Secondo me, la Juventus vincerà il campionato. [In my opinion, Juventus will win the league championship.]

Quando sarò grande, farò il pompiere. [I will be a firefighter when I grow up.]

Se continuerà  a nevicare, gli aerei non partiranno. [If it continues to snow, the planes will not leave.]

Notice that in italian, unlike in English, we can use the future tense after se [if] and quando [when].

As you already know, Italians may also use the present tense to talk about the (near) future and their plans:

Domani partiamo per il Marocco. [Tomorrow we’re leaving for Morocco.]

Stasera non torno a casa: devo finire un lavoro. [I’m not coming home tonight: I have to finish a job.]

To conjugate the verb according to the subject that performs the action, you do the same thing as for the present conditional:

    • drop  the final -e of the infinitive;
    • change the -a in the infinitive of -are verbs to -e (practically, -are and -ere verbs share the same conjugation);
    • add the following endings:
diventare prendere aprire sentirsi
[io] diventerò [io] prenderò [io] aprirò [io] mi sentirò
[tu] diventerai [tu] prenderai [tu] aprirai [tu] ti sentirai
[lui, lei] diventerà [lui, lei] prenderà [lui, lei] aprirà [lui, lei] si sentirà
[noi] diventeremo [noi] prenderemo [noi] apriremo [noi] ci sentiremo
[voi] diventerete [voi] prenderete [voi] aprirete [voi] vi sentirete
[loro] diventeranno [loro] prenderanno [loro] apriranno [loro] si sentiranno

Verbs that are irregular in the present conditional will also be irregular in the future tense. Consider the two similar conjugations side-by-side:

Conditional of volere [would want]
Future of volere [will want]
[io] vorrei [io] vorrò
[tu] vorresti [tu] vorrai
[lui, lei] vorrebbe [lui, lei] vorrà
[noi] vorremmo [noi] vorremo
[voi] vorreste [voi] vorrete
[loro] vorrebbero [loro] vorranno

 

Here are some time expressions that are commonly used with the future tense:

prossimo [next] → l’anno prossimo, la settimana prossima, sabato prossimo…

fra [in] → fra due giorni, fra tre mesi, fra cinque anni…

 


This page titled 5.03: Il futuro semplice is shared under a CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 license and was authored, remixed, and/or curated by Daniel Leisawitz and Daniela Viale via source content that was edited to the style and standards of the LibreTexts platform.

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