Future with "ir + infinitive" vs. simple future (falarei)

Say falarei com você amanhã to a friend at a beach kiosk and nothing breaks; you may sound as if you have turned up in a dinner jacket. Vou is common in everyday Brazilian conversation; the one-word form is frequent in print, ceremony and the law, and also occurs in speech. Knowing it helps you read and understand more formal contexts. The weather report, the headline about what the minister dirá, the rental contract listing what you pagará, the anthem an entire stadium sings: all of it is written in endings you are about to recognise on sight. And one small corner of it is spoken every single day — será que…? — which can express uncertainty about the past, present or future.

Nothing gets chopped off — you build on the whole infinitive

For regular verbs, take the whole infinitive and stick the ending on the end. The conditional uses the whole infinitive too; the simple future is not unique in this.

Common conversational forms

• "Vou dormir cedo hoje." (I'm going to bed early tonight.)

• "A gente vai decidir na reunião de quinta." (We're going to decide at Thursday's meeting.)

• "Você vai se acostumar rápido." (You're going to get used to it fast.)

• "Eles não vão aceitar essa proposta." (They're not going to accept that offer.)

Forms common in more formal contexts

• "O Congresso votará o projeto na próxima semana." (Congress will vote on the bill next week.)

• "As lojas fecharão mais cedo no domingo." (The shops will close earlier on Sunday.)

• "Haverá mudanças no regulamento." (There will be changes to the rules.)

• "Choverá no Sul a partir de terça." (It will rain in the South from Tuesday.)

Ir has a one-word future of its own: irei

The verb that builds your spoken future also has this one, and it is perfectly regular: Irei ao médico na terça. (I'll go to the doctor on Tuesday.) It is the tidy way around the vou ir argument you met in A2 — nobody can object to irei.

The future that gives orders

In solemn and legal Portuguese this tense stands in for the imperative: Não matarás. (Thou shalt not kill.) · O locatário devolverá o imóvel limpo. (The tenant shall return the property clean.) You can encounter this use in solemn speech and legal writing.

Impersonal haver: haverá, not haverão

Haver meaning "there is" refuses to agree with what follows, in this tense as in every other: Haverá duas aulas na segunda. (There will be two classes on Monday.) ✗ Haverão duas aulas is the slip Brazilians make too. In conversation you will often hear Vai ter duas aulas.

Future seen from a past moment — or from now

For a future viewed from a past moment, Brazilians can say Ele disse que ia chegar tarde. — the imperfeito of ir from earlier in this lesson. The one-word form chegaria does that job too, and it is the whole of Lesson 2. Chegará is also possible when the arrival is still future from the speaker's present viewpoint.

Falarei is a two-word future that fused shut. Late and Vulgar Latin developed a future by putting habere ("to have") after the infinitive — cantare habeo, "I have to sing" — and over the centuries the auxiliary wore down onto the verb: cantare habeo → cantar hei → cantarei. So the endings -ei, -ás, -á, -emos, -ão derive from historical present forms of haver, welded on and no longer recognisable — which is also why hei de falar still exists, using three words to express a related future intention or obligation. Source: Revista da Abralin — José Luiz da Veiga Mercer

A Rio speech study excluded the simple future from its informal statistical modelling. Josete Rocha dos Santos analysed recordings from the 1980s — 941 future contexts from formal radio interviews and 871 from informal conversations. In the informal sample, the one-word future occurred 54 times: its frequency was counted, but the author considered the sample too small for that part of the statistical analysis. It was frequent in the formal spoken sample. Source: Revista Philologus — CiFEFiL

The simple future also appears in what Brazilians sing. “Verás que um filho teu não foge à luta” — a line from the national anthem — uses the one-word future in the standard tu form. Use of tu and its agreement varies across Brazil. Joaquim Osório Duque-Estrada's lyrics became official in 1922; Francisco Manuel da Silva's melody had become popular in 1831. These are the lyrics and music named in the law today. Sources: Câmara dos Deputados, Law No. 5.700/1971