For most students, French tenses aren’t that fun to learn or to use.
They generally require some sort of endings or a conjugated auxiliary. And it can get confusing rather quickly.
That’s not the case for the near future, the Futur proche in French.
The near future is the simplest French tense there is. It just requires you to learn 6 different words. And with it, you’ll be good to go and conjugate verbs at a future tense.
In this video and article, I’m going to cover:
- How to conjugate verbs at the near future in French
- How to translate it in English
- And when to use the near future.
C’est parti.
Author : Marie Drouvin
Salut! Je suis Marie and I'm on a mission to make learning French simple. You can find me on Youtube, or here, on this blog. And if you want to know more about how to learn French, take a look at my book.
How to conjugate verbs at the futur proche in French.
The near future is a compound tense.
That generally means we need to use an auxiliary: être ou avoir (depending on the verb we want to conjugate).
But that’s not going to be the case here, instead of the traditional auxiliaries, here we are going to use the verb ALLER.
ALLER – to go.
And we are going to conjugate it at the présent simple.
Aller being a highly irregular verb, it gives:
Je vais
Tu vas
Il va / Elle va / On va
Nous allons
Vous allez
Ils vont / Elles vont
So that’s ALLER at the présent simple.
I go
You go
He goes / She goes…
Now, comes the very easy part.
To conjugate the verb PRENDRE for example, to take, at the near future, we are just simply going to add the infinitive, the raw form of the verb, after ALLER.
It gives.
Je vais prendre.
Tu vas prendre.
Il va prendre / Elle va prendre / On va prendre
Nous allons prendre
Vous allez prendre
Ils vont prendre / Elles vont prendre.
Easy right?
Let’s take another verb. The verb ÊTRE – to be. A notoriously irregular verb. But here, no problem.
Je vais être.
Tu vas être.
Il va être / Elle va être / On va être
Nous allons être
Vous allez être
Ils vont être / Elles vont être.
And you can do that with any verb.
If any of this is not very clear (auxiliaries, compound tense,…), you should consider learning about French tense before you go further.
I have a course that explains it all in details AND teaches you all the tenses you need to speak French.
COURSE - French Tenses Mastery
What does it mean when a verb is conjugated at the near future.
That’s easy too. Because in English, you can sort of do the same thing.
I am going to take….
The verb ALLER – to go – and an infinitive – TO TAKE.
So whenever you see the near future in French, you can translate it with ‘going to’ in English.
Je vais prendre le train. I am going to take the train.
Il va être content. He is going to be happy.
Ils vont manger au restaurant. They are going to eat to the restaurant.
So when should you use the near future?
Near future – as its name indicates it – is for actions or states that are going to be done soon.
In French, there are two main tenses for the future.
the near future, and the future simple.
The main difference between the near future and the future simple is this feeling of ‘it’s going to be done soon’.
Tu va voir, le film est génial.. VS Tu verra, le film est génial.
First one, is ‘You are going to see, the movie is great’ . Possibly we are about to watch the movie, or we will see very soon.
You will see. → Probably that you will maybe watch the movie later.
The difference is not huge.
So in fact, you could get away with just knowing the near future, and using it for everything future.
It’s much more important, that you know the difference between the tenses of the past than tenses of the future.
For example, it’s crucial that you know the difference between the Passé Composé and the Imparfait.
Congratulations, you can now conjugate verbs at the Futur Proche in French. The only thing that you have to memorize is the present simple of ALLER.
Which you should already be familiar with because it’s a very common verb.
If you want to dig deeper into French tenses, take a look at my course.
