Lesson 4, part 4, Future Tense, simple and compound

Lesson 4, part 4, Future tense

The Italian language has two future tenses -
il Futuro Semplice and il Futuro Composto- while English has only one future tense.

IL FUTURO SEMPLICE
The simple future tense (il Futuro Semplice) in Italian is used to talk about future actions:

Stasera telefonero’ alla mia amica. Tonight I’ll call my friend.
Mio figlio fara’ l’esame domani. My son will take an exam tomorrow.
Stasera parlero' con mia moglie. This evening I will talk with my wife.

The future tense is formed by adding endings to the verbs.
There are two types of verbs, regular and irregular and they follow different patterns to form present tense.

Regular Verbs
All regular verbs drop final –e from the infinitive and add the endings -o’, -ai, a’, -emo, -ete, -anno.

In regular verbs ending in –are the a of the infinitive changes to e.  ( Notare Studiare e Mangiare cambiano la a con la e mentre Partire rimane inalterato ).

	Studiare to study	Mangiare to eat	Partire to leave
Io	Studiero’	Mangero’	Partiro’
Tu	Studierai	Mangerai	Partirai
Lui/Lei	Studiera’	Mangera’	Partira’
Noi	Studieremo	Mangeremo	Partiremo
Voi	Studierete	Mangerete	Partirete
Loro	Studieranno	Mangeranno	Partiranno

Verbs ending in -care and -gare add an h to the future tense stem after the c or g in order to retain the hard sound. Verbs ending in -ciare and -giare drop the i from the ending.

Irregular Verbs

There are twelve common verbs which follow irregular patterns in future tense. The most important irregular verbs are avere and essere because in addition to being frequently used in their own right, they are used as auxiliary verbs to form il Futuro Composto.

Avere to have	Essere to be		Venire to come			Vedere to see	Andare to go			Dare to give
avrò	sarò		verro’			vedro’	andro’			daro’
avrai	sarai		verrai			vedrai	andrai			darai
avrà	sarà		verra’			vedra’	andra’			dara’
avremo	saremo		verremo			vedremo	andremo			daremo
avrete	sarete		verrete			vedrete	andrete			darete
avranno	saranno		verranno			vedranno	andranno			daranno d>
Fare to do/to make		Sapere to know		Stare to stay/to be	Potere can			Dovere must	Volere may
faro’		sapro’		staro’	potro’			dovro’	vorro’
farai		saprai		starai	portrai			dovrai	vorrai
fara’		sapra’		stara’	potra’			dovra’	vorra’
faremo		sapremo		staremo	potremmo			dovremo	vorremo
farete		saprete		starete	potrete			dovrete	vorrete
faranno		sapranno		staranno	potranno			dovranno	vorranno

IL FUTURO COMPOSTO

This future tense describes two actions that will happened in the future, first one as if it were already happened and second one as if it will happened:

Quando sarai arrivato mi chiamerai. When you arrive call me.

Quando avro’ finito il colloquio andro' a pranzo. When I finish an interview I will have lunch.

There is no equivalent of il futuro compost in English. As shown in the examples above, English uses present tense.

Il futuro composto is formed by two verbs, an auxiliary verb avere or essere in the future form and a past participle of a verb.