Italian · Chapter 9 · Lesson 8 · Grammar primer
The future tense
Unusually generous: all three verb families share one set of future endings.
The short version
Saranno le otto is a guess, not a forecast
Italian uses the future tense to guess about the present. Asked the time without a watch, an Italian says saranno le otto: it must be about eight. English needs must or probably for this; Italian just switches tense. If a future-tense sentence makes no sense as a prediction, read it as a supposition about right now.
Dove sarà? Sarà a casa.
Italian plans usually take the present tense
For anything already arranged, spoken Italian uses the present plus a time word, exactly as English says I am going tomorrow. Domani vado a Parigi is the natural sentence; domani andrò a Parigi is correct but sounds like an announcement. Save the future for promises, predictions and the shrug of vedremo, we will see.
Domani vado a Parigi.
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