Lesson 20

Talking About the Future Without a Future Tense

Language Transfer Complete Spanish is by Mihalis Eleftheriou. Listen to the original audio first; use these notes for revision.

New vocabulary

Spanish	English
pronto	soon
ver	to see
ve	he/she sees
ven	they see
ves	you see
vemos	we see
veo	I see
nos	us / ourselves
la semana que viene	next week (literally "the week that comes")

Key concept: With clear future context words, Spanish often uses the present tense instead of an explicit future form.

Spanish	English
La veo más tarde.	I'll see her later.
La veo esta noche.	I'll see her tonight.
La vemos pronto.	We'll see her soon.
Las vemos pronto.	We'll see them soon.
La ves pronto.	You'll see her soon.
Las ves pronto.	You'll see them soon.
¿Las ves pronto?	Will you see them soon?
¿No las ves pronto?	Won't you see them soon?
¿Por qué no las ves pronto?	Why won't you see them soon?
Vamos a verla.	We're going to see her.
¿Vas a verlo pronto?	Are you going to see him/it soon?
¿Vas a vernos pronto?	Are you going to see us soon?
¿Nos vas a ver pronto?	Are you going to see us soon?
Nos vemos la semana que viene.	We'll see each other next week.
Hablamos la semana que viene.	We'll speak next week.
Hablo con él mañana.	I'll talk to him tomorrow.
¿Vienes?	Are you coming?
Desayuno con ellos mañana.	I'm having breakfast with them tomorrow.

Pronto is another future-context word, like mañana, más tarde, and esta noche.
Nos can mean us or ourselves, depending on the sentence.
The building method still matters here: reduce the sentence to the smallest chunk, say that piece, then build the next one.