An easy way to talk about the future!

Today we’re learning how to talk about the future in Portuguese and I’m sure that, in the end, you’ll find it very simple. Obviously, we have, in Portuguese, a future tense, but the truth is we don’t use it very often. Instead of our future tense, more formal and literary, we express the future using the verb “IR” (to go) in the present, plus the infinitive of the verb we really want to use. Let’s first learn how to conjugate the verb “IR” (to go) in the present:

TO GO	IR
I go	Eu vou
You go	Tu vais  (informal)
You go	Você vai (formal)
He goes	Ele vai
She goes	Ela vai
It goes	——-
We go	Nós vamos
You go	Vocês vão
They go	Eles vão (masculine) / Elas vão (feminine)

Now that we know the verb, we only have to add an infinitive, like this:

• Amanhã eu vou comprar um livro. (Tomorrow I will buy a book)
• Para a próxima semana, vamos comer uma pizza. (Next weak, we will eat a pizza).

We do this with all the verbs except for the verb “IR” it self. So, for instances, we never say “Amanhã, eu vou ir à praia”. That’s incorrect. If we want to say, “Tomorrow I will go to the beach”, we just say “Amanhã, eu vou à praia”. We just use the verb “IR” in the present, and that’s enough to express the future.