Future II (exact future)
Lesson opening
This is the first part of the lesson. The rest, the exercises and the reviews are in the app.
Future II: budem plus the participle after ako and kad
The l-participle has turned out to be a remarkably hard-working form. With the clitic sam (a clitic is a short unstressed word that cannot come first in a sentence) it builds the perfect (radio sam “I worked”), with the clitic bih the conditional (radio bih “I would work”). This lesson gives it one more job on exactly the same participle: Future II (futur II), the auxiliary budem plus the l-participle, budem radio.
Future II is a narrow tense. It lives in subordinate clauses, the part of a sentence that begins with ako “if”, kad “when”, dok “while” or čim “as soon as”, about a future that has not arrived yet. You met this budem in the lesson “Future I”, with a warning attached: budem is not a plain “I will be”, it is a part of a different construction. Now we assemble that construction in full and, above all, keep it apart from something you already know, the perfective present: the present tense of a perfective verb, used for the future (kad dođem “when I come”).
How it is built: budem plus the l-participle
The assembly is familiar: you have done it twice already, in the perfect and the conditional. Take the present tense of the “second” stem of biti “to be” (bud-) and attach the same l-participle you use in the perfect:
The auxiliary budem carries the person, the participle carries gender and number, exactly like sam + radio in the perfect. English has no gender here, so this is the part to watch: a woman says budem radila, a man budem radio; about a female friend it is bude radila, about several people budu radili.
The verb biti itself also has a Future II, budem bio, budeš bila:
Ako budem bio slobodan, javiću ti se. If I’m free, I’ll let you know.
But biti often makes do with budem alone, without bio: kad budeš gotov “when you’re ready”, ako sve bude u redu “if everything is OK”. Both forms are correct. English, too, says “if I’m free”, with a plain present, where Serbian has budem.
Three forms on one participle
It pays to see the whole family at once. The same participle, radio/radila, changes only its auxiliary, and with the auxiliary the tense or mood changes too:
Cheat sheet
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Future II: budem plus the participle
Future II (futur II, egzaktni futur, predbuduće vreme) = the present budem + the l-participle agreeing in gender and number. It means a future that comes before another future (with dok, alongside it). Used only in a subordinate clause: of condition or time (ako, kad, dok, čim) and after ko “whoever”; the main clause usually takes Future I (ću) or the imperative.
Conjugation
The auxiliary carries the person, the participle gender and number, as in the perfect: Ako bude padala kiša… (kiša is feminine). Biti too: Ako budem bio slobodan, javiću ti se. If I’m free, I’ll let you know. Often budem alone is enough: kad budeš gotov, ako sve bude u redu.
One participle, three auxiliaries
Only in the subordinate clause
Never in a main clause: not “*Sutra budem radio”, but Sutra ću raditi.
The fork by aspect
An imperfective present after ako is possible (Ako sutra imam vremena, doći ću) but ambiguous; Future II (ako budem imao) places the condition clearly in the future. After kad it usually means a habit: Kad imam vremena, čitam. Future II of a perfective verb is correct too (kad budeš stigao), but conversation prefers the perfective present. After ko: general statements about the future, Ko bude radio, imaće. He who works will have.