The Future Tense in Spanish
The future tense in Spanish is definitely one of the easier of all tenses in Spanish to learn because there are only twelve commonly used verbs considered irregular in conjugation.
The Spanish future tense is one of those rare tenses in Spanish because it is reasonably regular in its conjugation. There are very few verbs that are actually irregular Spanish verbs.
Even more surprising is that those verbs that are irregular, are not overly difficult to learn as they each follow a easily recognized formation making Spanish verb conjugation much easier…more about that shortly to start with however, I will first cover how regular verbs are conjugated in the tense known as the future.
The first big point is that each of the verb groups, the -er, -ir and -ar verb groups, have different endings in most of the other tenses in Spanish, in the future tense they all share exactly the same endings! These endings are joined to the infinitive of the verb being conjugated. For example:
Hablar - ‘to speak‘
- hablaré I will speak
- hablarás you will speak
- hablará he, she or it will speak
- hablaremos we will speak
- hablaréis you will speak (plural)
- hablarán they will speak
As mentioned, this type of conjugation is applied to every Spanish verb in the future tense but there are a small number of irregular verbs that are often used. As with the regular verbs the endings are exactly the same, however what makes these verbs irregular is that there are irregularities in the stem of each of them. Thankfully, these irregular stem changes are used throughout the conjugation, so even the irregular verbs are pretty regular!
The irregular verbs in the future tense, accompanied by the irregular stem change are:
- caber ‘to fit’ or ‘to be possible’ - caber becomes cabr
- decir ‘to say’ - decir becomes dir
- haber ‘to have’ - haber becomes habr
- hacer ‘to do’ or ‘to make’ - hacer becomes har
- poder ‘to be able to’ or ‘can’ - poder becomes podre
- poner ‘to put’ - poner becomes pondr
- querer ‘to want’ - querer becomes querr
- saber ‘to know’ - saber becomes sabr
- salir ‘to leave’ - salir becomes saldr
- tener ‘to have’ - tener becomes tendr
- valer ‘to cost’ - valer becomes valdr
- venir ‘to come’ - venir becomes vendr
Always remember that the future tense for irregular verbs are formed the same as for regular verbs and that the irregular stems are simply replacing the full infinitive.