Step-by-Step Spanish

LAST week we started looking at different ways of talking about the future, focusing on the most common one, the future of intention (voy a, vamos a etc.)

You won’t find this form in that big white verb book you have propping up the furniture in your living room, as it doesn’t officially count as a tense, but from the point of view of communication, it fulfils an important function.

I ended up the article scaring you to death about pronunciation. Actually, about half an hour after I’d sent the article off, I realized I could have made it even worse by highlighting the ‘b’ ‘v’ confusion.

That would have given us ‘¿Qué va a hacer?’ potentially sounding like ‘kebasé’. Incidentally, if you were to ask a Spanish person if that is what they say, they are sure to deny it. The same happens to us in English, we don’t think we say ‘hambag’ instead of ‘handbag’ and would deny the accusation – but actually we do, unless we’re Lady Bracknell of course.

Right, let’s get back to the point! There are a few more things to say about this ‘going to’ form.

As well as describing intentions, it also describes what we can call ‘predictions based on present evidence’.

For example, we look up at the heavens, see the storm clouds gathering and say ‘Va a llover’ (It’s going to rain), or we watch a car heading for a tree and say ‘Va a chocar’ (It’s going to crash). We would assume this is not an intention; it is just something we can see is inevitably going to happen based on our observation.

Two more points before we leave this one behind. As English speakers, we should be very careful about translating directly across from one language to the other.

There are instances when we have to use this ‘future of intention’ form in Spanish when in English we don’t have to.

For example, in English I can say ‘What are you doing after the party?’ or ‘I’m phoning Bill tomorrow’. As these sentences refer to the future, in Spanish we have to say ‘¿Que vais a hacer después de la fiesta?’ (Notice I’ve opted for the plural ‘you’ this time) and ‘Voy a llamar a Bill mañana’.

Finally, here’s another little trick. It will be easier for those who have learnt the past continuous tense (the –aba one) but really it can be used straight away by anybody!

We can put this form into the past to say ‘I was going to’. This is a good phrase for making lame excuses.

I will now elaborate. The present tense of ‘ir’ which we are current using goes like this: Voy, vas, va, vamos, vais, van. If we put this same verb into the past continuous tense it goes like this: Iba, ibas, iba, íbamos, ibais, iban.

So, for example, if ‘vamos a’ means ‘we ARE going to’, then ‘íbamos a’ means ‘we WERE going to’. Get it?

Now when someone catches you out on the phone you can say: ‘¡Oh José! ¡Te iba a llamar!’ (Oh Joe, I was going to phone you!) and it sounds as insincere in Spanish as it does in English.

Welcome back to the real world of communication!