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The Future and future perfect tenses

The endings of the future are the same for all verbs, regular and irregular. They are –ò, –ai, –à, –emo, –ete, -anno. In the regular verbs and in more irregular verbs, they are attached to the infinitive after dropping the last vowel. But note that in the first-conjugation verbs, the –a that precedes the final –r becomes –e.

The infinitive of most irregular verbs is easily recognized from the future form (farò, direte, staremo, daranno). Some irregular verbs have an irregular stem; of the verbs already presented, the following are in this category:

infinitive                 future stem             1^st sing. future

andare                     andr-                       andrò

avere                        avr-                         avrò

essere                      sar-                          sarò

sapere                      sapr-                       saprò

In general, verbs whose infinitives end in –rre, such as porre, add the future endings to the stem (infinitive minus final -e): porrò, porrai, etc. In Italian as in English, the future translates “shall” or “will” plus the meaning of the verb: parlerò – I shall speak, or I will speak; avrete — You will have, etc.

NOTE: In translating from Italian to English, the future tense offers no difficulty. It should be noted, however, that the future tense is sometimes used to express probability in the present.

Giovanni non è venuto. Sarà malato. — John did not come. He must be (= He probably is) ill.

Che ora è? —Saranno le dieci. — What time is it? –It must be (= It probably is) ten o’clock.

The future perfect, which is formed by adding the past participle of the main verb to the future of the auxiliary (avere or essere), translate “shall have” or “will have” plus the meaning of the past participle: avrete dato — you will have given; saranno arrivati — they will have arrived.

VOCABULARY A

VOCABULARY B