Going to: vou falar

The shortcut Brazilians actually use: ir + infinitive

Now the honest part. In ordinary Brazilian conversation, the simple future above is uncommon. What people say instead is the present tense of ir followed by an infinitive, exactly like the English going to:

• Eu vou ligar amanhã. - I am going to call tomorrow.
• Ela vai chegar tarde. - She is going to arrive late.
• Nós vamos ver. - We will see.
• Vocês vão gostar. - You are going to like it.
• Eu vou te ajudar. - I am going to help you.

Unlike English, where going to and will carry slightly different shades, Brazilian Portuguese uses vou + infinitive for nearly everything: plans, predictions, offers, the lot. Vamos ver is the national shrug; veremos exists, but over coffee it sounds weighty.

The only thing you need to learn here is the present of ir, which you already know if you have done the irregular verbs. Four forms, and every infinitive in the course becomes a future.

Negatives and pronouns in the ir future

Two small placement rules. The first is what English word order would suggest: não goes in front of ir, not in front of the infinitive:

• Eu não vou falar nada. - I am not going to say anything.
• Ela não vai voltar hoje. - She is not going to come back today.

An object pronoun, in Brazilian speech, sits between the two verbs, right in front of the infinitive it belongs to:

• Eu vou te ligar amanhã. - I am going to call you tomorrow.
• Nós vamos te ajudar. - We are going to help you.

That middle slot is where Brazilians put the pronoun almost every time, whatever a grammar written in Lisbon says. It is one more reason the ir future is the easy one: nothing inside a verb has to move.

What about going to go?

Strictly, I am going to go would be vou ir, and you will hear it all over Brazil. It is not an error, but some careful speakers and editors avoid it, because the present already does the job: Amanhã eu vou para casa already means I am going home tomorrow. Say vou on its own and nobody will blink.