🅶 Le futur proche – The near future
Le futur proche
The near future in French
Écrit par / Written by: Anthony Lucas
Dernière révision / Last update: 12 December 2023
You don’t need to know much to be able to say what you will do next 😀 Even as a beginner student, you can easily tell what your plans for tonight or tomorrow are. Indeed, once you know how to conjugate the verb “aller” at the present tense, you are allowed to travel to the future 🚀
Le futur proche n’est pas un temps – The near future is not a tense
You will study later the future tense. As a tense, it means that for each subject, you need to change the ending of the verb, following a specific rule. But as the near future is not a tense but a particular structure to express the future, there is no need to memorise the conjugation for every verb.
Parler d’événements futur en français – Talking about future events in French
In French we don’t use much the present tense. Most of the time, when mentioning future plans, we use the near future. Indeed, the future tense is used to express an intention to do something in the future as a project, so not very concrete, or to express a guess about future actions and situations, so with an uncertain probability to happen.
For instance, we use the future tense to say: “One day, I will climb the Everest mount.“. This is a dream and it could happen some day in the future but it is not planned at all at the moment.
On the contrary, in order to talk about all the plans, meetings, events happening in the next days and weeks, French people use the near future. It indicates therefore a very high probability that these events will actually happen.
For instance, we use the near future to say: “I will mow the lawn next Thursday.“. This event is planned and a day has already been chosen.
Construction du futur proche – Building the near future
In order to use the futur proche, 2 steps are needed:
1️⃣ you need first to know how to conjugate the verb aller at the present tense
2️⃣ you need then to know the verb at the infinitive form you want to talk about 😉
(➜ you will find a list of the 50 most common verbs in this lesson)
Let’s say our example “I will mow the lawn next Thursday.” in French:
1️⃣ the subject is “I” so with the verb aller at the present tense it gives “Je vais“
2️⃣ “mow the lawn” in French is “tondre la pelouse“
👉🏼 “Je vais tondre la pelouse jeudi prochain.”
As you can see, the structure is the same as in English: “I am going to …“.
Gros avantage de la construction du futur proche – Big advantage of building the near future
As you noticed, the only verb you need to conjugate is the verb aller. The verb after is at the infinitive form so it means it is not conjugated. It means once you know how to conjugate aller and you the verb at the infinitive, you are good to talk about your plans, about what you will do next like any French would. 🥳
Exemples – Examples
| 🎧 | 🇫🇷 French | 🇬🇧 English |
|---|---|---|
| Je ne vais pas travailler aujourd’hui. | I’m not going to work today. | |
| Il va appeler son père. | He is going to call his father. | |
| Tu vas diner avec Fred ce soir ? | Are you going to have dinner with Fred tonight? | |
| Je vais essayer … | I will try… | |
| Vous allez nous manquer ! | We are going to miss you! | |
| Nous allons bientôt déménager. | We will be moving soon. |
À RETENIR
WORTH REMEMBERING
To talk about the near future, the French do not use the simple future tense. They use the near future tense.
This is lucky for you, because you don’t need to learn how to conjugate verbs in the future tense. You just need to conjugate the verb “aller”.
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