The Future in Spanish： The 2 Simplest Ways

In this video, we're going to walk through the two simplest ways that you can start to express yourself and talk about things that are going to happen in the future. The first way to talk about the future is to not change anything at all. For things that we already have context for, where we know we're talking about the future, we can just use the present. A lot of times this works really well. Just like in English, we can say, I'm going to the store tomorrow. We don't always have to say, I will go to the store tomorrow. I'm going to go. Because we have the word tomorrow in there. I'm going to college next year. I'm starting a new job in six months. We have a very similar sentence structure in English, and we can pretty much apply the same logic to Spanish in this case. So you might say, mañana voy a la ciudad de Guatemala. Tomorrow I'm going to Guatemala City. You don't have to change the conjugation or make it into a future tense. Mañana voy a la ciudad de Guatemala. Or, el vuelo sale a las once. The flight leaves at 11. We know what time we're talking about in the future, so we don't have to say the flight will leave at 11. Or, en Julio nos vamos de vacaciones. In July, we're going on vacation. We know we're talking about July, so we don't have to say we will go on vacation. We can just say we are going on vacation. Nos vamos de vacaciones. All right, now, how do you talk about the future when you don't have that context? When you actually need to say that something will or is going to happen. Again, you can use a structure that also exists in English. And that is the, I'm going to blank structure. As in, I'm going to eat, I'm going to study, I'm going to walk, and so on. In Spanish, this is three parts. We use ir, to go, a, to, and a verb in the infinitive. The verb that you're going to do, the thing that you're going to do, and the infinitive is just the verb in its original, out of the box, out of the dictionary form, hasn't been conjugated. Like, hablar instead of hablo. This makes it really easy because all you have to do is conjugate ir, to go. The verb after it doesn't have to change at all. So let's look at a couple of quick examples. Voy a comer. I'm going to eat. Voy a comer. Voy a estudiar. I'm going to study. Remember that in Spanish, pronouns are not usually necessary because the verb tells us who we're talking about. So I don't need to say, yo voy a estudiar, unless I want to emphasize that I am the one doing the studying. You're going to the party. Well, I have to study. Also note that you're not going to usually hear a space between voy a estudiar. You're going to hear people say, voy a estudiar, all as one big chunk. Voy a estudiar. Now, what if it's a reflexive verb? Those are the ones that end in C, like levantarse or ducharse. They are verbs that are used usually to describe things that you do to yourself. Things like getting yourself up or brushing your teeth or taking a shower. So if you're the one who's showering or getting up, for example, all you need to do is change that C to a M and your sentence basically stays the same. So it's voy a levantarme. I'm going to get up. I'm going to get myself up. Voy a ducharme. I'm going to shower myself. And you'll also hear people say, me voy a levantar, or me voy a duchar. So that me can either be at the end of the sentence or you can move it to the front of the sentence, like me voy a levantar, me voy a duchar. Either one is correct. Just say whichever one feels easier to you right now. Now, what if we're talking to somebody else or about somebody else, about what they're going to do? All we have to do is change ir to match the person that we're talking about. If I'm talking to you, tú, I'll say vas a estudiar para la prueba. Are you going to study for the test? Or mi hermano va a trabajar en una farmacia. My brother is going to work in a pharmacy. Or el año que viene, vamos a viajar a Italia. Vamos a viajar. We are going to travel a Italia, to Italy. And in the last case, what happens if somebody is going to do something for someone else or to someone else? For example, I'm going to call you, or I'm going to give you a present. You know, we don't say, voy a llamar tú, or voy a dar tú un regalo. Instead, we change that tú to a te, or a me, if we're talking about me. So let's look at a couple of examples. To say, I'm going to call you, we would say, voy a llamarte. Similar to what we did with the reflexive verb, the te can go at the end or at the beginning. We can say, te voy a llamar, or voy a llamarte. Again, whichever one feels easier to you, either one is correct. Or if we want to say, what are you going to say to him or her? ¿Qué vas a decirle? What are you going to say to him or her? Note that this is kind of an ambiguous phrase by itself. Usually, we would have context to tell us who we're talking about. But if there is no context, you don't know who you're talking about. You have to say, ¿Qué vas a decirle a María? Or, ¿Qué vas a decirle a mi mamá? What are you going to say to María? What are you going to say to my mom? All right, go practice right now. Make a few sentences out of what you just learned. Otherwise, you're going to forget it right away. Try to make one sentence for each of the examples that I gave you. One using just the present to talk about the future with, for example, Mañana voy al aeropuerto. And another few sentences using the voy a plus infinitive verb construction. You can leave your sentences in the comments and I'll be happy to provide feedback and help you correct them and figure out how to make them sound more natural and help make it, you know, you can ask me any questions that you might have about what we just went over. All right, that's it. If you like this video and you want more videos to help you with your Spanish, don't forget to subscribe. And if you want even more, you can head over to BreakthroughSpanish.com where I have a free course designed to help you learn some of the basics of conversational Spanish in just a week. So if that sounds interesting, take a look. And otherwise, I will see you in the next video. Thanks for watching.