Verbs: The Future Indicative

Let’s switch to the future now.  Again, there are various shades of future (I will go, I will have been, I might go, I am going to go etc.), so there are various tenses that relate to the future.  The simplest of these tenses is simply known as ‘future’ or ‘future indicative’ which is a fairly logical name really (the grammarians must have been having an ‘off’ day).  In English, we achieve this tense by using the auxiliary verb ‘will’, or sometimes ‘shall’ (strictly speaking, in English, you are supposed to use ‘shall’ for the first person, and ‘will’ for the second and third person – unless you are trying to add emphasis, in which case you use them the opposite way round).

In Portuguese, the future tense is not used very often - they tend to use the appropriate conjugation of 'ir', followed by the infinitive of the verb (eg. 'vou comer' instead of 'comerei').  You are more likely to come across the future indicative in writing than in speech.  The true future indicative is a simple form, and is conjugated as follows:

Irregular verbs and the future indicative…

Comments

Stress can be handy! =) Written by Chris on 2006-02-04 16:48:05 IP: 80.3.128.8 This might sound like kind of an abstract concept, but you can get a hint of the past/futureness of a verb from its stress. That's handy for those times when your brain goes blank and you can't remember what tense a conjugation applies to (I find this when reading books).    You know how we replace the stem with a conjugated ending? (eg: falAR becomes falO or falAVAM)    Well let's start by separating our word into syllables:    fal-AR; fal-O; fal-AV-am    I've capitalised the syllable that sits where the stem used to be. We'll call this the Stem-Syllable    Generally, the past conjugations will place stress on the stem syllable. Like this:    fal-AV-a  fal-AV-as  fal-AV-a  fal-ÁV-amos (note how an accent is added to make sure the stress falls on the stem-syllable. This stress feature of the verbs isn't a coincidence, it's deliberately preserved in the official spelling.)  fal-AV-am    fal-EI  fal-AS-te  fal-OU  fal-ÁM-os  fal-AR-am    By contrast, the future:    fal-ar-EI  fal-ar-ÁS (again, an accent is given to make this work)  fal-ar-Á  fal-ar-EM-os  fal-ar-ÃO    The last conjugation here is especially important. The ÃO and AM sounds are virtually identical - so the sound of falaram and falarão are differentiated only by stress, even though their meanings are tensually opposed (oo, nice posh phrase!).    This may sound obscure, but it really helps me remember the conjugations. It also helps you give a bit more feeling into your pronciation; when you remeber the stress you can feel yourself throwing the word into the future or pulling it into the past depending on where the stress goes. And that aids comprehension.    Or I'm just very strange... =P  Hope this helps someone.

Stress and Tense Written by Administrator on 2006-02-04 16:54:53 IP: 80.3.128.8 Thanks for that observation Chris - hopefully that will help some as a general rule of thumb (it doesn't always work that way though - eg. 'falamos' and 'falámos' both have the stress in the same place, but 'falamos' is present and 'falámos' is past).    Just one thing I would disagree with: "the sound of falaram and falarão are differentiated only by stress" - the pronunciation of each is quite different. Both are nasal, but 'ão' more-so than 'am', and the 'ão' sound is also more open (like 'ow' in 'cow') whereas 'am' is similar to the English pronunciation, but with the 'm' being swallowed - almost turned into an 'n'.

Future Progressive Written by Andrew on 2007-06-19 04:55:28 IP: 75.86.143.213 In spanish the present progressive tense, comparable to future indicative, is formed like this: Ir + a + Infinitive - and this indicates that something is GOING to happen. Such as, Voy a ir a espana, I am going to go to spain, is there any simple future tense construction like this in Portuguese? Perhaps constructed like Vou a ir a Lisboa? Muito Obrigado!

Ir+Infinitive Written by Administrator on 2009-07-15 08:36:54 IP: 80.3.252.130 Yes, you can use 'ir' + infinitive to talk about the future without invoking the future indicative. This is explained on this page: www.learningportuguese.co.uk/language/irregular-verbs.html (at the end).

thanks Written by brianna on 2008-01-16 02:42:01 IP: 68.9.208.239 thanks thsi helped soo much in preperations for my big portuguese test

Handy Future Infinitive Hint Written by stevee on 2009-03-13 19:55:52 IP: 90.41.24.64 Hi, great site by the way!  I noticed you gave a handy hint for the future infinitive conjugations as being the full infinitive plus the appropriate endings then gave 9 written examples for emphasis, when you could have saved yourself some typing and added that a REALLY handy hint is that the endings all come from the present indicative tense conjugation of the important verb "Haver - to exist, there to be, to have" which are:  hEI  hÀS  hÀ  havEMOS   havEIS  hÀO  so if you have learned the present tense of Haver, you will automatically know the future indicative of any verb (infinitive) - unless there is some obscure irregular verb I dont know about..?   ps Your explaination of the confusing ser/estar perm/temp situation is really helpful - been bugging me for ages..

Write Comment
Please keep the topic of messages relevant to the subject of the article. Please keep your comment SHORT and to the point. If I think your comment might cause offense, or does not add any value, I will not publish it. If you are a Brazilian who wants to learn English, please DO NOT post a comment here. Please don't use comments to plug your web site. If you enter your e-mail address it will NOT be published on this site, but it will enable us to contact you if necessary.
Name:
E-mail
Title:
Comment:
Code:*

Powered by AkoComment!