Hello everybody,
In English we have the Future Progressive tense such as "I will be working tomorrow" or "When she gets here, we will be already having lunch." I know that Italian has a present and past progressive tense such as " Il bambino sta dormendo" and "Mamma stava pulendo la casa questa mattina." I've been looking for the Futuro Progressivo online and in books, but I can't find it. Does this mean that there is NO future progressive tense in Italian?
Answers will be extremely helpful.
Thank you,
Wilson Tosta
Hi Wilson! Yes, we do have a future progressive in Italian.
"I will be working tomorrow" would be "io domani starò lavorando" and "When she gets here, we will be already having lunch" would be "quando lei arriverà" (in Italian we use the double future unlike English) "noi staremo già pranzando". Notice that you will not find the phrase "io domani starò lavorando" alone. It needs another chunk like "quando tu mi telefonerai domani io starò lavorando". Otherwise we would say simply "domani io lavorerò" (or, very common, "domani io lavoro". Nowadays we change the future with the present tense althoguh it's not correct)
futuro semplice del verbo stare + gerundivo
starò lavorando
starai lavorando
starà lavorando
staremo lavorando
starete lavorando
staremo lavorando