Will, Shall & English's Lack of Future Tense...

Question

English has two ‘modal’ verbs, ‘will’ and ‘shall’, which, broadly speaking, are used to express the future tense. Nowadays the difference has become blurry and probably less important, not least owing to the common use of the contraction ‘-‘ll’, which is the same for both.

However, a difference still exists. To confuse the matter yet further, some English grammar books mix the two when conjugating them, thus:

• I shall // you will // he/she/it will
• I will // you shall // he/she/it shall

Personally, I find this mixing to be rather artificial.

Nonetheless, the questions remain: What do these two different words actually mean ? And what is the difference between them ?

Some insight may be gleaned from looking at other Germanic languages with cognates (to my knowledge, most of them do possess cognates), e.g. German (which I can't speak) itself has both ‘wollen’ and ‘sollen’, which respectively mean and ‘want’ and ‘ought’ (although it's important to bear in mind that German uses another word for the future tense, 'werden', which means something like 'to become').

Hence, for me, ‘it will happen’ means ‘it is intended that it going to happen’ or even ‘it is hoped it is going to happen’ whereas ‘it shall happen’ means ‘it is definitely going to happen’.

Of course, no one can say with absolute certainty that something ‘is definitely going to happen’ because no one has a crystal ball. Therefore, in practical terms, ‘shall’ is really used in order to express a greater degree of ‘will’, or determination, e.g. by lawmakers when drawing up statutes, e.g. ‘It shall be an offence…’.

Because these verbs are ‘modals’, they have no pure infinitive forms (unlike their cognates in other Germanic languages). In my own personal view (and I’m aware some others take the opposite view), this is a major deficiency of the English language. However, they do conjugate, to an extent, into the past tense, albeit their meanings may change, thus:

• will --> would… Of course, ‘would’ is also used for the conditional mood, but it can also be used for the past tense of ‘will’ (albeit perhaps somewhat archaically), e.g. as in the title of the book, ‘The Man who Would be King’, which really means ‘The Man who Wanted to be King’ and is sometimes mistranslated.
• shall --> should… Here ‘should’ is used to mean ‘to be obliged’, and nowadays it isn’t really used for the past tense of ‘shall’, thus it’s perhaps closer to ‘sollen’. If you wish to express 'shall'/‘should’ in the past tense, you should say ‘had to’ or something similar.

Taking account of the foregoing, it's arguable that English (and indeed perhaps other Germanic languages) doesn’t (don’t) really have a future tense in the sense that Spanish (and other Romance languages) does (do). The closest to a pure future tense in English is probably ‘to go’, e.g. ‘it’s going to happen’.

Will / Shall in Spanish

In Spanish there are a number of classic ways to express the future tense, e.g.:

• Present tense... This is more common in Spanish (&, I gather, many other European languages, including other Germanic ones) than in English, e.g. 'nos vemos mañana' = 'we'll see each other tomorrow'.
• 'Ir' as auxilliary... This works in a similar way to the English use of 'to go', e.g. 'voy a hacerlo mañana' = 'I'm going to do it tomorrow'.
• Pure future tense... Formed as a pure conjugation of the infinitive by the addition of an ending, this is what English (and other Germanic languages) lacks (lack), e.g. 'lo compraré' = 'I'll buy it' (Spanish, Italian and French all use this kind of formation).

However, given the meanings of 'will' and 'shall', it might also sometimes be possible to render them in Spanish using other words, e.g.:

• 'I will win' = 'quiero ganar'
• 'You shall do it' = 'debes / deberías hacerlo'

:) - ian-hill, Aug 10, 2015

Answer 1

I will return = a prediction.

I shall return = a promise.

There are 7 ways of expressing the future tense in English - even without a future tense conjugation.

Exactly... ;-) - Faldaesque, Aug 10, 2015

Some grammar books put it the other way around for the first person, although in my humble opinion they are wrong to do so... ;-) - Faldaesque, Aug 10, 2015

Answer 2

How about this:

I shall return = Deberé retornar

I will return = Retornaré

I will win => I will winning = Deseo ganar

You shall do it = Deberás hacerlo

You should do it = Deberías - Debieras hacerlo

Would that help?

No, I think you shall do it is very, very strong, more of an order really! - annierats, Aug 10, 2015

Correcto. Deberé, is almost an obligation. - chileno, Aug 11, 2015