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Future Tense (1)

In German, it is very common to use present tense to express events in future. For this, temporal adverbs such as morgen (tomorrow), naechste Woche (next week) etc. are used.

For example:

Ich gehe morgen ins Kino (I go to the cinema tomorrow)

Wir sehen uns spaeter (We’ll see each other later)

This is especially the case for referring to events that will happen in near future.

Apart from the present tense, there are two more tenses which can be used to indicate events that will happen in the future. First one is the simple future or sometimes called as Futur I and the second one is future perfect or sometimes called as Futur II. In this lesson, we will discuss the first one and in the next one, we will cover Futur II.

The good thing about the simple future tense is that it is very easy to form it. As helping verb, “werden” is used in its simple tense form and the second verb is simply used in its infinitive form. That means that you just need to know how to conjugate werden in simple present tense.

Conjugation of werden in present tense

Werden is an irregular verb.

Ich werde I become

Du wirst you become

Er/sie/es wird he/she/it becomes

Wir werden we become

Ihr werdet you become

Sie/sie werden you/they become

But, when werden is used as helping verb, its meaning becomes “will”

For example, in order to express “I will go to the cinema”, you say

Ich werde ins Kino gehen

As you see in the above sentence together with the helping verb “werde”, the infinitive form of gehen (to go) is used. As in case of sentences with modal verbs, the infinitive comes at the end of the sentence.

Expressing probability

When Future I is used with some adverbs, it is used to indicate probability. The most obvious of such adverbs is “vielleicht”, which means maybe. “Ich werde es vielleicht machen”. (I’ll probably do that). Sometimes “wohl” is used for similar purpose “Ich werde es wohl machen” (I guess I’ll do it). Bestimmt is another word which is used similarly: “Du wirst jetzt bestimmt arbeiten” (you will certainly work now)

Using with modal verbs

When werden should be used with modal verbs, the modal verb should be placed at the end of the sentence and warden should be on the second place in the sentence.

For example, a typical sentence with a modal verb is constructed like the following:

Ich muss jetzt arbeiten (I must work now)

If werden is used:

Ich werde jetzt arbeiten  müssen (I will need to work now)

Vocabulary

Words related to time

Die Minute minute

Die Sekunde second

Die Stunde hour

Die Zukunft future

Die Gegenwart present

Die Vergangenheit past

Immer always

Meistens most of the time

Manchmal sometimes

Selten seldom