How to Talk About the Future in Japanese

With the New Year celebrationsbehind us, it’s time to forget about our past mistakes and look forward to the future.

Talking about our New Year’s resolutions in Japaneseisn’t so easy though. Mastering the future tense is as arduous as finishing an entire osechibento including those… unidentifiable fishy bits.

One of the biggest problems with talking about the future tense in Japanese is that, one could argue, Japanese doesn’t really have a “proper” future tense like other languages.

A common example of this is へくwhich can mean anything from the present (I’m going to university [and am a student now]) to the future (I will go to university [and I am not a student now]).

Forming the future tense in Japanese with nouns

Japanese accomplishes a lot of what English accomplishes with “will” and “be going to” by attaching nouns instead of verbs to the verb in question.

The most commonly attached nouns are つもり(“intention”) and 予定(“plan”). For example, if there was likely to be any ambiguity about whether the speaker was talking about the present or the future when they said 大学へ行くthey may add つもりto make 大学へ行くつもり(“I intend to go to university”) or 予定to make 大学へ行く予定(“I plan to go to university”), which may help to clear up any misunderstandings.

The ことに form

So far so good? Things get just a bit trickier when we want to project into the future. For that, we need to use the ことに forms. The most common of these are ことにするand ことになる.

ことにするimplies you’ve “decided to” do something. In this case, you’ve made the decision (in the past) to do something (in the future). Make sense?

Let’s look at some examples.

Of course, this grammar can also be used to state your New Year’s resolutions or goals for the year. So someone like myself with a fondness for Christmas cake might say: これからケーキはべないことにする(“From now on I won’t eat cake!”) Don’t quote me to that in a month from now…

ことになる, on the other hand, is a similar grammar point that is instead used when the decision has been made by someone else or is beyond your control.

In both these sentences, the speaker has no control over how long the event will be or how tough said activity will be.

The ～になる form

ことになるis not the only grammar point like this, as the ～になる form can also be used to look into the future. While ことになるis usually added to verbs or adjectives, になるis often added to nouns to mean that “~ will become ~” such as 種子はになる(“This seed will become a flower”).

While になるis debatably future tense as it can also be used to make general statements about something, it is often found with だろうor でしょうto make it clear that the speaker is talking about the future.

はになるだろう(“He will become a doctor”) or いになるだろう(“The weather will be good”), for example, are often used to make suppositions about a future event.

でしょうand だろう

でしょうand だろうare two examples that also serve as future tense equivalents as they are often used to make guesses about what will happen, often based on current information.

The problem is that current information works both ways and it is often possible to infer about things that happened in the past using these forms.

So while 彼はるだろう(“He’ll come”), 明日はだろうか(“Will it rain tomorrow?”), 嵐になるだろう(“It’ll be stormy tomorrow”), and彼も行くでしょう(“He will go too”) are all similar to “will”; it would be difficult to argue that when だろう/でしょうis attached to past tense sentences such asだったんだろう(“I was a fool”).

Talking about the near future

Another common form is にいくand にくる. These are often used for expressing the near future.

しにた(“Came to study”) or いに行く(“Go to help”) are two examples of this where the action will take place in the near future.

Expressing probability

One of the slightly less commonly used grammar forms is 可能性がある(Probability of something happening).

Take, for example, 今夜はになる可能性がある(“There is a probability it will rain tonight”).

Of course, this falls apart when 可能性があるis used to describe a general statement such as このはする可能性がある(“This machine has a probability of exploding”) which is obviously a statement about the nature of something rather than a future tense.

Another possible contender is かもしれないas in the sentence 明日は雨かもしれない(“It may rain tomorrow”).

Like most probability grammar, it can also be used for statements of common fact such as それはかもしれない(“That is probably true”) which makes it a poor contender for a true future tense.

Adding adverbs to make future tense sentences

Ultimately, one of the most useful ways to make future tense sentences is by attaching an adverb to the verb that indicates that the verb will be happening in the future. まもなく, もうすぐ, すぐにand many others are all added as adverbs to mean that something will happen soon, for example.

Therefore our quest for a true future tense in Japan has proved not entirely fruitless but not exactly bountiful either, as many of these forms only function as future tenses in certain specific situations and there are many exceptions.

So what are your plans for this year? Let us know in the comments and bonus points if you can use one of these grammar points!

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