German · Chapter 5 · Lesson 12 · Grammar primer

Future tense

Prescribed by the AQA specification.

The short version

German talks about tomorrow in the present

When a time word already points forward, Germans use the plain present, not werden. Ich komme morgen is the normal way to say I am coming tomorrow; Ich werde morgen kommen sounds deliberate, like a promise. Keep werden for predictions, promises and guesses.

Ich komme morgen.

I am coming tomorrow.

Er wird zu Hause sein is usually a guess

werden plus an infinitive often means probably, right now, rather than later. Er wird zu Hause sein is more often he is probably at home than he will be at home, and adding wohl makes the guess explicit. English does the same in that will be the postman.

Sie wird wohl müde sein.

She is probably tired.

That's the gist. The full article goes deeper - more examples, the edge cases, the why - and the practice below scores like a vocabulary session and earns the same XP.

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Practice

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10-question session

One question at a time, mixed across the exercises in this lesson. Miss one and it comes back round before the end. There are 17 in all: practise more afterwards if you want them.

Lesson 12 of 16 in this chapter

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