The simple future

In Italian we have a dedicated tense to express the future. Just like the past tenses or present tense, it also requires a dedicated conjugation. For example, if I wanted to say 'I will meet John' and were using the specific conjugation for the future, the Italian sentence would be Incontrerò Giovanni. You can easily discover how the verb endings would have to change if the subject of the sentence instead of 'I' was 'you', 'he', 'she', 'they' ect.,.. using the conjugator tool in the Strumenti section of this blog. At first glance it would look like you are bound to learn one more set of complicated endings by heart if you want to say something about a future action! This is still relatively easy if you are writing and have the time of working out the conjugation by looking it up in a reference book or online. Remembering it on the spot while you are engaged in speaking can be slighly more problematic though.

The good news is that in Italian you can talk about future actions simply using the present tense, as long as you use words that explicitly signal that the action expressed by the verb is set at some point in the future (these words include for example domani, l'anno prossimo, fra due minuti etc.,..(tomorrow, next year, in two minutes...).

For instance. if you wanted to say 'Probably Mary will meet John next year' you can simply use the present tense and say 'Forse Maria incontra John l'anno prossimo' alongside with 'Forse Maria incontrerà John l'anno prossimo', which of course is also correct but would require you to remember the specific conjugation.

Other strategies to get around the problem include the use of expressions like ho intenzione di, penso di, etc... especially when you want to express your intentions for the future.
So for example, 'I am going to buy a house next year' becomes Ho intenzione di comprare una casa l'anno prossimo or Penso di comprare una casa l'anno prossimo. Again, no need of remembering the whole conjugation pattern by heart.