Purpose

By the end of this lesson, you will be able to conjugate the future and conditional tenses, including their shared set of irregular stems.

Lesson Explanation

The future tense uses the entire infinitive as its stem, with one shared set of endings across all three conjugation groups: -é, -ás, -á, -emos, -éis, -án. From hablar: hablaré, hablarás, hablará, hablaremos, hablaréis, hablarán.

A small but genuinely important group of verbs has an irregular future stem, though the endings stay the same: tener → tendré, hacer → haré, poder → podré, decir → diré, salir → saldré.

The conditional (“would”) uses the exact same stem as the future — including its irregular stems — but with a different set of endings, identical to the -er/-ir imperfect endings from Part 3, Lesson 4: -ía, -ías, -ía, -íamos, -íais, -ían. From hablar: hablaría, hablarías, hablaría, hablaríamos, hablaríais, hablarían. Since the stems match, tendría, haría, podría, diría, saldría all apply the same irregular stems as the future.

As with earlier-covered near-future ir + a (Part 3, Lesson 1), everyday spoken Spanish overwhelmingly prefers that construction over the true future tense for near-term plans; the true future is more common in writing and for distant predictions or promises: El próximo siglo traerá grandes cambios. (The next century will bring great changes.) The conditional is also genuinely common for polite requests: ¿Podrías ayudarme? (Could you help me?) — noticeably more polite than ¿Puedes ayudarme?

Practice Questions