What the Heck is the Future Perfect?
January Latin Challenge: Day 15
Before we start, I want to give you my free complete overview of Latin verbs. It has all the tables of endings for Latin verbs in all tenses, moods and voices. It will be really useful to have to hand when translating, as you can look up any verb ending you need. Go and download it now from this page, it’s a really valuable resource to have.
Now let’s get to it - the future perfect tense in Latin. You might have never heard of it, or you might know that it exists but not understand how it works. Either way, this video is for you. This is an interesting and not very common tense in Latin, but it is important to know, especially how it relates to the verb to be.
If you are unsure of the verb To Be in Latin, don’t worry. That is coming up tomorrow, as Day 16 of the bambasbat January Latin Challenge. Don’t miss it, subscribe below to make sure you get that lesson straight to your inbox.
What IS the future perfect?
It’s what’s called a completed action in the future. Basically it is something that will have happened by a certain point. This is also how you translate it into English. For example, “by next week I will have taken my driving test”, or “tomorrow you will have seen the news”.
Now because the future perfect is a completed action in the future, that means it actually has more in common with the perfect and pluperfect tenses than you might expect.
Just like the two completed past tenses, the future perfect is formed using the 3rd principal part - the perfect stem.
Top tip:
In your dictionaries and glossaries you should have all principal parts written out for you, and it is well worth while taking the time to learn them. It does take longer, but it means you won’t be phased by seeing a really irregular verb if you know all the ways it can change.
Forming the Future Perfect in Latin
Take the 3rd principal part, the perfect stem. Take off the -i ending, as that is the perfect ending, and instead add on the future perfect endings depending on the person doing the action.
With portare as my example, I take the 3rd principal part, portavi. Then take off the -i which is the perfect ending, and add my future perfect endings instead. I get this table.
If you have read ahead of the January Latin Challenge, you may have noticed that these endings are the same as the simple future tense of the verb to be.
The use of the verb to be as endings is common in Latin - not just in compound verbs like possum, but also any verb’s pluperfect tense endings (-eram -eras -erat) on their own are the imperfect tense of the verb to be!
If you want to go further into the most irregular verb in almost any language, then make sure you keep an eye on your inbox for Day 16 of the January Latin Challenge: To Be or Not To Be (in Latin).
Anyway, let’s have a look at some examples in Latin.
As usual I have the vocab below for you - less to check out this time as I just want you to focus on the endings of the verbs, rather than trying to blast you with vocabulary.
If you want a go at translating these yourself, don’t read on until you are ready for the explanations below.
cras, puella duos annos in urbe habitaverit.
hodie decem dies in urbe manserimus.
milites nunc urbem ceperint.
Read on for explanations
cras, puella duos annos in urbe habitaverit.
Always look for the verb first - in this case its at the end of the sentence, as it most typically is. habitaverit is a future perfect tense - 3rd person singular. “He/she will have lived”.
I need a nominative singular to match, and puella fits this - the girl. So she is in charge.
Then I add in my other information.
cras means tomorrow. This explains my future perfect tense.
duos annos is a temporal phrase, meaning “for 2 years”, and in urbe means “in the city”.
Putting all that together: “Tomorrow, the girl will have lived in the city for 2 years”.
hodie decem dies in urbe manserimus.
Again I look for my verb first. manserimus is a 1st person plural future perfect verb - it comes from maneo, so it is quite irregular in that 3rd principal part, the perfect stem. “We will have stayed”.
in urbem is the same as in the first sentence. “In the city”.
hodie means “today”, and decem dies is another temporal phrase - “for 10 days”.
“Today we will have stayed in the city for 10 days”.
milites nunc urbem ceperint.
This one is a classic latin arrangement. Connectives are often the 2nd word in a sentence, and here I have that with nunc. You can translate this as now, or by now.
The verb is again at the end, ceperint - a 3rd person plural future perfect. “They will have captured”.
This means I need a nominative plural to match my verb ending - milites is “the soldiers”.
We know urbem now, the city.
Altogether, it’s: “The soldiers will now have captured the city”.
That’s the future perfect tense!
Let me know if you have any questions or problems in the comments. If you want to learn more about verbs in Latin, make sure to check out my previous posts here, and if you haven’t already go and download my Complete Verbs Reference Guide here - it has all the endings for verbs in latin for every tense, voice and mood, so it will be really useful for looking things up.
I hope you have found this post useful! Thanks for reading, and I’ll see you tomorrow for Day 16 of the January Latin Challenge on bambasbat!