Destinos: 27-52 The Main Grammar Points, and Exercises with ...

5
I. THE FUTURE TENSE
FORMS.
The formation of the future tense in Spanish is unique in several ways: for regular verbs, the
endings are attached to the infinitive, not the root of the verb; there are no irregular endings for
any verb in the future tense; the future tense endings for all verbs are a combination of what we
would expect for -AR verbs and what we would expect for the -ER and -IR verbs.
FUTURE ENDINGS FOR ALL VERBS IN SPANISH
hablar + -é
comer + -á
-ás
-emos
vivir + -éis
So: hablaré, comeré, viviré; hablarás, comerás, vivirás; hablará, comerá, vivirá, etc.
Note that three of the endings [those for yo, nosotros(as) and vosotras(os) ] begin with the letter
e, and the other three (those for tú, él/ella and ellas/ellos begin with the letter a).
Note also that the nosotras(os) ending is the only one of the six endings that does not have a
written accent; the other five forms have accents.
There are several important verbs that have irregular stems for the future. These must be
memorized. The endings for these verbs, however, are the same as for all other verbs in the
future:
decir: dir- (so: diré, dirás, dirá, diremos, diréis, dirán)
haber: habrhacer:
harpoder:
podrponer:
pondrquerer:
querrsaber:
sabrsalir:
saldrtener:
tendrvenir:
vendr-
-án