Verbs: The Future with ir + a + infinitive

Show Notes: Hola y bienvenidos a Norton’s Spanish Basic. One of the verbs we learn early on in Spanish is ir. Even people that claim to not know any Spanish often know the words vamos and vámonos – both forms of the verb Ir. The Spanish verb ir  means to go. Many first year students will hesitate on how to conjugate this verb because the conjugations don’t look anything like the infinitive. However, we can use the forms of ir to talk not only about going places but also about future happenings.   By the end of this lesson you should be able to write sentences to describe events or actions that will take place in the future.   We have more than one way to discuss future events in English. That means that there is more than one way to do future conjugations. Take a look at these two examples:   I will study today. I am going to study today.   You can see that their meanings are similar and vary just slightly. The first example is a future tense that we call the simple future. It is typically studied in Spanish 3 or the end of Spanish 2. We’re going to be looking at the second one, “I am going to study today”. Going, of course, comes from the English infinitive verb to got. This is where we start using that ir that was mentioned earlier. Before we start doing these structures with ir, let’s do a quick review of how ir conjugates:   VERB: IR – To go Yo VOY Nosotros VAMOS Tú VAS Vosotros VÁIS Él VA Ellos VAN Ella VA Ellas VAN Usted (Ud.) VA Ustedes (Uds.) VAN   So to say “Yo voy” you would be saying “I go”. Now let’s consider that applied to our English sentence above:    I am going to study tonight. I am going = Yo voy, to study = estudiar,  today = hoy.   Now that’s almost all we need. The only thing missing is the letter a. When we connect voy with estudiar, we do so with the letter a. The structure of ir + a + infinitive  is what we use when we are going to talk about events or actions that are going to take place.   Yo voy a estudiar hoy.   Read the following se...

Channel: iTunes Video Length: 0s Date Found: Sat, Jul 16 2011 12:10 PM Category: Educational Date Produced: Mon, Oct 25 2010 12:00 AM View Count: 0