Some languages have grammatical categories to represent near future, a subcategory of the

future tense In grammar, a future tense (abbreviated ) is a verb form that generally marks the event described by the verb as not having happened yet, but expected to happen in the future. An example of a future tense form is the French ''aimera'', meaning ...

. *

Going-to future The ''going-to'' future is a grammatical construction used in English to refer to various types of future occurrences. It is made using appropriate forms of the expression ''to be going to''.Fleischman, Suzanne, ''The Future in Thought and Langu ...

in English may express near future. *Similarly to English, the French verb (''to go'') can be used as an auxiliary verb to create a near-future tense (''le futur proche''). Whereas English uses the

continuous aspect The continuous and progressive aspects (abbreviated and ) are grammatical aspects that express incomplete action ("to do") or state ("to be") in progress at a specific time: they are non-habitual, imperfective aspects. In the grammars of many l ...

(''to be going''), French uses the

simple present tense The simple present, present simple or present indefinite is one of the verb forms associated with the present tense in modern English. It is commonly referred to as a tense, although it also encodes certain information about aspect in addition ...

; for example, the English sentence "I am going to do it tomorrow" would in French be « Je ''vais'' le ''faire'' demain ». As in English, this form can generally be replaced by the present or future tense: "I am doing it tomorrow", "I shall do it tomorrow", « Je le ''fais'' demain », « Je le ferai demain ». *

Chichewa tenses Chichewa (also but less commonly known as Chinyanja, Chewa or Nyanja) is the main lingua franca of central and southern Malawi and neighbouring regions. Like other Bantu languages it has a wide range of tenses. In terms of time, Chichewa tenses ca ...

can be divided into present, recent past, remote past, near future, and remote future. The dividing line between near and remote tenses is not exact, however. Remote tenses cannot be used of events of today, but near tenses can be used of events earlier or later than today. *

Mizo language The Mizo language, or ''Mizo ṭawng'', is a Kuki-Chin-Mizo language belonging to the Tibeto-Burman family of languages, spoken natively by the Mizo people in the Mizoram state of India and Chin State in Myanmar. The language is also known as ...

uses conjugational suffixes ''dáwn mék'' for forming near future.

References

{{Grammatical tenses Time in linguistics Grammatical tenses Grammatical aspects

See also

References