Italian 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. For example: pubblicare (to publish) becomes Io pubblicherò.

Verbs ending in -ciare and -giare drop the i from the ending (i.e. Mangiare (to eat), Io mangerò)

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
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.

Esercizio : Coniugare i verbi al futuro