Tomorrow you will prepare pasta puttanesca. Saturday you will buy that Italian leather jacket you’ve been thinking about. Next year you will learn the future tense. Che sarà, sarà—what will be, will be! The future tense in Italian expresses an action that will take place in the future. Although in English the future is expressed with the helping verb "will" or the phrase "to be going to," in Italian a verb ending marks it as being set in the future tense. For example:
Alla fine di settembre partirò per Roma. (At the end of September I will leave for Rome.)
First-Conjugation Verbs
The future tense (futuro semplice) of first-conjugation regular (-are) verbs is formed first by changing the infinitive ending -are into -er to obtain the root for the future tense. The following future endings are then added to the root: -ò, -ai, -à, -emo, -ete, -anno. (The following table includes a sample conjugation of the verb cantare.)
FUTURE TENSE CONJUGATION OF CANTARE
PERSON
SINGULAR
PLURAL
I
(io) canterò
(noi) canteremo
II
tu canterai
(voi) canterete
III
(lui, lei, Lei) canterà
(loro, Loro) canteranno
Second- and Third-Conjugation Verbs
The future tense of regular second- and third-conjugation (-ere and -ire) verbs is formed by simply dropping the final -e of the infinitive to obtain the stem and adding to the stem the following future endings: -ò, -ai, -à, -emo, -ete, -anno (the same endings, in fact, as those added to the first-conjugation group). For a sample conjugation, see the table below, which conjugates the verbs credere and partire.
FUTURE TENSE CONJUGATIONS OF CREDERE AND PARTIRE
PERSON
SINGULAR
PLURAL
I
(io) crederò, partirò
(noi) crederemo, partiremo
II
(tu) crederai, partirai
(voi) crederete, partirete
III
(lui, lei, Lei) crederà, partirà
(loro, Loro) crederanno, partiranno
Future Tense of Irregular Verbs
In the future tense, the verbs dare, stare, and fare simply drop the final -e of their infinitives and form the stems dar-, star- and far-, respectively; the stem of essere is sar-. These stems are then combined with the regular future-tense endings.
The verbs listed below also have an irregularly shortened stem in the future tense (usually, because the vowel a or e is dropped from the infinitive).
IRREGULAR FUTURE TENSE STEMS
INFINITIVE
FUTURE STEM
andare
andr-
avere
avr-
cadere
cadr-
dovere
dovr-
potere
potr-
sapere
sapr-
vedere
vedr-
vivere
vivr-
Also be aware of the spelling of verbs with infinitives ending in -ciare and -giare. These verbs drop the i before adding the future endings to the root: tu comincerai, noi viaggeremo. Also, verbs with infinitives ending in -care and -gare add an h to the root for the future to preserve the hard sound of the c or g of the infinitive: io cercherò, loro pagheranno.