Le futur : l'infinitif est le radical

Unité GR-49 · campagne 26 · le troisième pont : après le ils-radical et le nous-radical, l'infinitif — celui qui donne le futur et, à une terminaison près, le conditionnel.

Why the futur of some -er verbs changes its spelling — j'appellerai, j'achèterai, j'essuierai — is on Pourquoi « j'appelle » mais « nous appelons » ?.

You already build the conditionnel. That means you already build the futur — nobody has said so yet. The two share a stem, and the stem is the easiest one in the language to find, because you do not have to find it at all.

The stem is the infinitive

Take the infinitive whole and add the endings:

chanter → je chanterai · finir → tu finiras · partir → elle partira

Verbs in -re drop that final e and nothing else:

prendre → nous prendrons · écrire → vous écrirez · mettre → ils mettront

The endings are avoir

Say the endings out loud and you will hear a verb you know: -ai, -as, -a, -ons, -ez, -ont. That is j'ai, tu as, il a, nous avons, vous avez, ils ont with the first two syllables of avons and avez worn away. The futur was built that way historically — chanter ai, "I have to sing" — and the fossil is still legible.

The stems that refuse the infinitive

A closed list, and it is short. Learn it as fifteen syllables, not as fifteen rules:

ir- (aller) · aur- (avoir) · ser- (être) · fer- (faire) · pourr- (pouvoir) · saur- (savoir) · voudr- (vouloir) · devr- (devoir) · viendr- (venir) · verr- (voir) · enverr- (envoyer) · courr- (courir) · mourr- (mourir) · faudr- (falloir) · pleuvr- (pleuvoir)

Two spelling traps sit outside the list. Appeler doubles its l through the whole futur — j'appellerai, nous appellerons — and acheter takes a grave accent throughout: j'achèterai, nous achèterons. The accent and the double consonant are not optional and they never alternate the way they do in the present.

Bridge 3 — the same stem gives the conditionnel

GR-45 gave you two bridges: the ils-form carries the subjonctif, the nous-form carries the imparfait. Here is the third, and it costs nothing:

futur stem + imparfait endings = conditionnel.

je pourrai (futur) → je pourrais (conditionnel) · nous viendrons → nous viendrions · vous saurez → vous sauriez

Which is why the singular pair is a genuine minimal pair in writing and a near one in speech: je serai against je serais, one letter and one degree of certainty apart. When you cannot hear it, the sentence around it decides — quand pulls toward the futur, si + imparfait pulls toward the conditionnel.

Futur proche or futur simple

Both are correct French; they are not interchangeable in register or in distance. Aller + infinitive belongs to what is imminent, decided, or visible from where you stand — attention, ça va tomber. The futur simple belongs to what is scheduled, distant, or written — le colloque aura lieu en mars. Spoken French leans on the proche far more than textbooks suggest; a written exam leans the other way, and B2 graders notice.

There is one place the conditionnel does the futur's job: inside a past report. Elle promet qu'elle viendra becomes elle a promis qu'elle viendrait — the futur of a past moment, which is exactly the concordance rule GR-30 gave you, seen from the stem side.

Going further

Minimal pairs. One change between the two sentences, and what it does:

Stems missing from the list above: tenir → tiendr-, valoir → vaudr-, cueillir → cueiller-, acquérir → acquerr-, s'asseoir → assiér- / assoir-. And every -oir verb breaks "the infinitive is the stem": recevoir → recevr-, devoir → devr-.

After quand, lorsque, dès que, aussitôt que, French uses the futur where English and Russian use the present: Quand tu seras là, on partira. And the futur antérieur for what will be finished first: Dès que j'aurai fini, je t'appelle.

The futur softens a request: Vous voudrez bien signer ici.

In English the future is a separate word (will); in French it is an ending on the infinitive — parler-ai is historically parler + ai (I have to speak). That is why the infinitive is the stem.

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