![\"back](\"https:\/\/rickzullo.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/11\/Back-to-the-future.jpg\" "\\"Back")
<\/a><\/p>\nKeeping with the theme, I\u2019d like to address a specific grammar issue, and that is teaching the difference between the various future tenses to our Italian friends.\u00a0 This would be an appropriate lesson for Intermediate Level learners. In a previous post, I named a few general challenges when teaching English to Italians<\/a>.\u00a0 If you haven\u2019t read that yet, you might want to check it out first.<\/p>\n For those of us from the United States who mostly slept through sixth grade grammar class (and still somehow managed a \u201cB\u201d), let\u2019s review what we should have learned had we been awake.\u00a0 Basically, we can describe future actions in four ways: the present simple tense, the present simple continuous, the future simple, and the \u201cgoing to\u201d form.\u00a0 There are more, of course, but these are by far the most common.<\/p>\n The rules here are fairly easy to teach, but getting your students to incorporate them into daily usage is more difficult.\u00a0 A beginner Italian will usually try to use the present simple for everything, because in Italian this is often quite acceptable. \u201cVado in spiaggia domani,\u201d<\/em> literally means \u201cI go to the beach tomorrow.\u201d\u00a0 Do your ears hurt when you hear the phrase spoken in that way in English?\u00a0 Mine do.<\/p>\n On the other hand, an intermediate Italian will often fancy him\/herself more clever by using the future simple, \u201cI will go to the beach tomorrow.\u201d \u00a0But it’s not much better, is it?<\/p>\n In English we will usually employ either the present continuous, \u201cI\u2019m going to the beach tomorrow,\u201d or the \u201cgoing to\u201d form, \u201cI am going to go to the beach tomorrow.\u201d\u00a0 Both of these are acceptable, however the former is usually preferred in this specific example.\u00a0 We use the present continuous when our plans are firm and the \u201cgoing to\u201d when\u00a0we’ve\u00a0made the decision, but not yet defined exactly when the action will be carried out.<\/p>\n <\/span><\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n We English speakers tend to reserve the future simple construction for promises or threats.\u00a0 For example, \u201cI will kill you if you look at my wife again!\u201d\u00a0 However, some English speakers might choose to use the \u201cgoing to\u201d in this case, to wit, \u201cI\u2019m going to kill you if you look at my wife again.\u201d<\/p>\n However this second phrase sounds less menacing, no?\u00a0 In the first example,\u00a0we’ve\u00a0clearly stated our intention to end the life of the ogler and we also hint at when we plan to carry out the act (immediately, if not sooner).\u00a0 In the second example,\u00a0we’ve\u00a0sort of made the decision to murder the lecherous cretin, but haven\u2019t yet figured when we\u2019ll actually get around to it.<\/p>\n You can see why an Italian would have a problem with this verb form\u2014it\u2019s much too faltering for such an emotional deed.\u00a0 When they say that they\u2019re \u201cgoing to kill you,\u201d what they really mean is that they WILL kill you!\u00a0 And I\u2019d take that seriously if I were you. (Of course, by the time he figures out which tense to use, you could just run away.)<\/p>\n So then it should give you some degree of suspicion when your Italian mechanic says that he \u201cwill fix\u201d your motorino tomorrow.\u00a0 What he should<\/em> say is that he\u2019s \u201cgoing to fix\u201d your motorino\u2026when he gets around to it.\u00a0 If he needs to take his mother to the doctor or watch the Monday morning soccer debates with his pals at the bar, then rest assured that you won\u2019t be riding your Vespa<\/a> for quite some time.<\/p>\n You see, the future is relative.\u00a0 When an Italian says, \u201cdomani<\/em>,\u201d it\u00a0doesn’t\u00a0necessarily mean \u201ctomorrow\u201d literally; it just means NOT today!<\/p>\n <\/span><\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I don\u2019t know about you all, but I don\u2019t much care for this time change nonsense.\u00a0 Last weekend in Italy and this past weekend in the US, we all were constrained to move our clocks back one hour, robbing us of sixty lovely minutes of precious sunlight every evening. Not only that, in theory, we […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":179,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,5,29],"tags":[35,47,39,28,48,14,34],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/rickzullo.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/178"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/rickzullo.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/rickzullo.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rickzullo.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rickzullo.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=178"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/rickzullo.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/178\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rickzullo.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/179"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/rickzullo.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=178"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rickzullo.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=178"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rickzullo.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=178"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}