Present/future tense, present/future subjunctive mood?

Question

How does one tell the difference between what tense and mood one should use? I'm having issues figuring out exactly how to say things about the future. I suppose that I'll let you know what I think and let you tell me what I have wrong.

For example,

"He will come tomorrow." Can be translated as "Viene mañana." Which in English is similar to "He comes tomorrow." Or "He is coming tomorrow." Or, Él va a venir mañana." "He is going to come tomorrow."

It wouldn't necessarily be "vendrá mañana," unless we are talking about the idea that he is supposed to come tomorrow but it isn't certain that he will (say, perhaps because he is flakey/isn't good at reaching airports on time, etc).

And for the subjunctive it would be like...someone telling him "Espero que le vengas a mi casa mañana." I'm hoping that you should come to my house tomorrow. Or, if you change vengas to venga you might be saying "I'm hoping that he should come to my house tomorrow." Except meaning that you desire that he will come, not necessarily that it is required/expected that he come. (Please help me here, have I used the indirect object pronoun appropriately here?)

I can't even imagine about how to go about creating a scenario in which the future subjunctive would make sense to me. Except for maybe something like. "Oí que Estaban viene mañana. Ojalá que fuere cierto." (Quizás Estaban es un chico amable o estrella del cine.)

Answer 1

Ojalá que fuere cierto.

This is in theory quite correct, fred, nice thread

But nobody uses the future subjunctive in modern Spanish. Actually, if you use that in a normal conversation, everybody would think you must be a foreigner, as everybody else would think, this is wrong and has to be:

Ojalá fuera cierto.

gracias, Heidita. - Fredbong, SEP 16, 2009