El futuro simple
Back in lesson 12 you built the future out of three pieces — voy a comer — and the one-word version was left for later. Later is now. The futuro simple is hablaré, comeré, viviré, and it is the easiest tense in the language to assemble: there is no stem to hunt for, because the stem is the whole infinitive, and one single set of endings serves all three verb groups. What deserves your attention is not the forms but the jobs. It carries predictions, promises and the long view — and then, unexpectedly, it turns into the ordinary way to guess about this very minute. ¿Qué hora será? is not a question about the future at all.
Take the infinitive, add the ending
Every other tense has made you chop the infinitive first. This one does not. The stem of the futuro simple is the dictionary word itself, with its -ar, -er or -ir still attached, and you hang one set of endings on the end of it: -é, -ás, -á, -emos, -án. Five endings, three verb groups, no exceptions among the regulars. hablar → hablaré, hablarás, hablará, hablaremos, hablarán. comer → comeré, comerás, comerá, comeremos, comerán. vivir → viviré, vivirás, vivirá, viviremos, vivirán. Say those three ladders out loud and you will hear that only the front half ever changes. Two details to lock in now. Every row carries a written accent except nosotros, and that accent is not decoration — it drags the stress onto the last syllable, which is the whole difference between hablará and the very different word hablara. And the bottom row does its usual double duty: ustedes hablarán and ellos hablarán are the same three syllables, whether you are addressing your two closest friends or a room full of strangers.
Twelve irregular stems, in three families
Twelve verbs refuse the plain infinitive and use a shortened stem. The endings do not change — not one of them, not for any of the twelve — so the only thing to memorise is the stem, and the twelve sort themselves into three tidy families. The first family slides a d into the gap where a vowel used to be: tener → tendr-, poner → pondr-, salir → saldr-, venir → vendr-, valer → valdr-. That gives tendré, pondrás, saldrá, vendremos, valdrán. The second family simply drops the vowel and keeps the r: saber → sabr-, poder → podr-, querer → querr-, caber → cabr-, haber → habr-. That gives sabré, podrás, querrá, cabremos. Watch the double r in querré and querrás — a single one between vowels would be pronounced too softly to hear. The third family is two verbs that cut themselves nearly in half: decir → dir- and hacer → har-. Diré la verdad. ¿Qué harás mañana? One member of the second family deserves its own line. hay — 'there is', 'there are' — is built from haber, so its future is habrá, and exactly like hay it has one form for singular and plural alike: Habrá una fiesta. Habrá muchos amigos.
Predictions, promises and the long view
This is the tense you reach for when you are looking further ahead than lunch. Predictions first: Mañana lloverá. Hará mucho calor el sábado. Every weather forecast in the region runs on it. Then promises, especially the ones you intend to keep — the futuro simple sounds more binding than voy a, the way English 'I will call you' sounds more binding than 'I'm gonna call you': Te ayudaré. Te llamaré todas las semanas. Volveré en diciembre. Then the long view, the plans measured in years rather than hours: El próximo año estudiaré en la universidad. Algún día viviremos cerca del mar. And finally the whole world of print and formality — a sign at the airport, a school timetable, a news bulletin, a contract. El museo abrirá a las nueve. If you are writing rather than chatting, this is the default future, and using voy a there would read as casual in the same way that contractions read as casual in an English letter.
The use you will hear most: guessing about now
Here is the part nobody warns you about. Put a verb in the futuro simple and you very often are not talking about the future at all — you are guessing about the present. ¿Qué hora será? means 'what time do you think it is?', asked right now, watch broken. Será la una. is 'it must be about one'. ¿Dónde estará mi mamá? is 'where can my mom be?' and Estará en el mercado. answers it: she's probably at the market, this minute. Tendrá unos treinta años. sizes up the person in front of you. English does exactly the same work with 'must be', 'probably', 'I bet' and 'I wonder', which is why the sentences translate so easily once you stop expecting a 'will' in them. Built on this is a construction you will hear a hundred times a week from Mexico to Colombia to Central America: ¿Será que…? It floats a question you are genuinely unsure about — ¿Será que llueve?, ¿Será que ya llegaron? — and it also softens a request into something almost apologetic: ¿Será que me ayudas? On its own, ¿Será? is a complete reply meaning 'you think so?', and ¿Y ahora qué será? is the sound of somebody bracing for news. Learn this section and the futuro simple stops being a tense you rarely need and becomes one you use daily.
Futuro simple or ir + a?
Both are correct, both are alive, and in everyday spoken Latin American Spanish ir + a does most of the work: Mañana voy a trabajar is far commoner out loud than Mañana trabajaré. The difference is distance and weight, not right and wrong. Voy a feels near, casual, already under way. Trabajaré feels further off, more deliberate, more written. So a friend asking what you are doing tonight gets voy a; a job application gets trabajaré. Two jobs belong to the one-word future alone. Guessing about the present, from the section above — va a estar en el mercado is a plan for later, not a guess about now, and it cannot do what Estará en el mercado does. And formal or printed language, where voy a simply sounds spoken. One job belongs to ir a alone: proposing something, because Vamos a comer doubles as 'let's eat' and Comeremos never will.
Words that point forward
A future tense is only as useful as the time words you can pin it to. el próximo año, la próxima semana, la semana que viene, pasado mañana, algún día, dentro de dos años, más adelante. For putting events in order you want the pair primero … luego, or primero … después: Primero terminaré el colegio, luego estudiaré en Lima. primero shortens to primer in front of a masculine singular noun — el primer día, el primer año — but stays whole in front of a feminine one: la primera semana. luego you have owned since hasta luego; standing alone it is 'then, next, later'. In Mexico, doubled, it flips completely: luego luego means immediately, right away, the very opposite of later. For the vaguer end of soon, the region says al rato and más tarde — and of course ahorita, which you met in lesson 12 and which still declines to tell you when.
The words of the day
la universidad is feminine, and note the preposition: across Latin America you entrar a la universidad, not entrar en. la escuela is the general word for school and the usual word for the primary years; the secondary years are el colegio in most of the region, la prepa — short for la preparatoria — in Mexico, el liceo in Chile and Venezuela, el secundario in Argentina. la abuela and el abuelo give you los abuelos for the pair, and almost nobody uses the plain forms to their face: it is abuelita and abuelito, the -ito from lesson 24 doing what it does best, carrying warmth instead of size. divertido is 'fun' or 'funny' in the good sense, and the verb behind it is divertirse, to enjoy yourself: Nos divertimos mucho. Mind which 'to be' you pair it with — La fiesta es divertida describes what parties are like, La fiesta estuvo divertida reports on the one you went to on Saturday, and here that finished evening takes the preterite estuvo. seguro covers both 'sure' and 'safe'; de seguro and seguro que sí are the everyday 'definitely'; estar seguro de is to be certain about something; and as a noun el seguro is insurance. llamar is a plain -ar verb, and calling a person takes the personal a: Llamaré a mi abuela. Its reflexive twin llamarse is the 'to be called' from lesson 2. To dial a number is marcar, and in Mexico you will constantly hear te hablo where you expect te llamo — both mean 'I'll give you a call'.
