Border Lines

The Spanish future tense is almost certainly one of the easiest of all tenses in Spanish to study because there are basically only 12 consistantly used verbs that are irregular.

The Spanish future tense is one of those rare tenses in Spanish because it is very regular in its conjugation. There are very few verbs that are deemed to be irregular Spanish verbs.

What is an even bigger surprise is that those verbs that are irregular, are not overly complicated to learn as they each have a easily recognized pattern making Spanish verb conjugation much easier… i’ll explain further shortly to start with however, I will first cover the conjugation of regular verbs in the future tense.

Unlike many of the other Spanish tenses, all verbs, whether they are -ar, -er or -ir verbs, use 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 also a small number of irregular verbs that are used frequently. All of these irregular verbs use the same endings as used for regular verbs and their irregularities are stem changes.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 conjugated the same as for regular verbs and that the irregular stems are simply replacing the full infinitive.

Related posts:

1. Living in Mexico – True Total Immersion Spanish Almost without exception, the private language schools and universities in Mexico use the translation method of Spanish instruction. The translation method is a philosophy of...
2. EncontrandoDulcinea to Guide Spanish Speakers to Best Web Sites According to Dulcinea Media, Spanish speakers are not being served by the Internet. So, they are launching EncontrandoDulcinea, a new Spanish language web site...
3. Love and Logic(R) Prepares Future Generations for Today’s Workplace GOLDEN, Colo., Oct. 28 /PRNewswire/ — The boss-employee dichotomy is a complex relationship that many are never taught to handle. What if you could raise...
4. Mexico Cruises – The Bargains Of The Cruise Business Why has Mexico become one of the most popular of all cruise destinations? Climate, culture, history, shopping, and spectacular beaches are just some of the...
5. Top Six Money Saving Ideas A list of a hundred money saving ideas would not be hard to compile. There are certainly ways to save money on everything from...