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Future II Tense

What's good to Know

The Futur II is based on the Perfekt past tense as it was and was (and still is) originally used to talk about something that will be finished in the future. In that it resembles the EN future perfect. Take a look at these examples:

  1. Ich habe geheiratet. --- PERFEKT --- I have/got married.
  3. Ich werde geheiratet haben. --- FUTUR II (definite future) --- I will have (gotten) married.

Adding "wohl" points out that you are making an assumption:

  1. Ich werde wohl geheiratet haben. --- FUTUR II (assumed future/situation) --- I will most likely have (gotten) married.

Make sure that you fully (!) understand the difference between the last two sample sentences. Like the Perfekt past tense, the Futur II can be build with "haben" or "sein". By the way, you use "sein" to build the Futur II whenever you'd also use "sein" in the Perfekt. Therefore one more example:

  1. Ich bin um 8 Uhr aufgestanden. --- I got up at 8am. --- "bin" because of "aufstehen"
  3. Ich werde um 8 Uhr aufgestanden sein. --- I will have gotten up by 8am.
  5. Ich werde wohl um 8 Uhr aufgestanden sein. --- I will most likely have gotten up by 8am.

    Be aware of HOW people around you or on TV are expressing certain things and you'll soon adjust to real life use of such topics. In everyday life I'd say no. 6 as follows:
    6 alt: Um 8 werde ich wohl (schon) aufgestanden sein. --- same meaning as no. 6

ACHTUNG: GAME CHANGER

While the examples above are indeed focussing on expressing something that will have been accomplished in the future, the Futur II is mostly used to make assumptions about the past. This makes a lot of sense as it is based on the Perfekt past tense as you could see above. Here a few more examples for this more common use:

Someone is late for a meeting:

7. Warum ist Mark zu spät gekommen? Er wird wohl im Stau gestanden haben.
Why did Mark come too late? He will most likely have been stuck in a traffic jam.

Notice that here we are not really talking about anything in the future but about something that supposedly happened in the past. One more example:

Someone is sick and wondering where she infected herself.

8. Von wem habe ich mir die Grippe geholt? Ich werde mich wohl bei meiner Tochter angesteckt haben.
From whom did I catch the flue? I'll most likely have gotten infected by my daughter.

Here we also relate to an event in the past.

Don't worry if this seems confusing to you at this point. If you do the exercises in this lesson and this lesson's preaching you'll soon get the hang of it.

This topic is covered in: B2-L12