Let’s talk about the future?… – Lesson nº18

This week we’re going to learn how to talk about the future in Portuguese and I’m sure that, in the end, you’ll find it very simple. Obviously, there is a future tense, butthe truth is we don’t use it very often. Instead of our future tense which is 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 express. Let’s first 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 /I am going to buy a book)
➢ Para a próxima semana, vamos comer uma pizza. (Next weak, we will / we are going to eat a pizza).

We do this with all the verbs except for the verb “IR” itself. 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.