Aspect in Polish in the Future Tense

Significance of Aspect

Almost every English verb is equivalent to two Polish verbs. This is so, because Polish verbs express the aspect of an action, i.e. information whether an action has been completed and has accomplished its aim or not. Verbs which refer to the action which either has been completed or will be completed are perfective verbs. Those which refer to the action which is still not completed or is repeated, are imperfective verbs.

In English the fact of duration or completion is expressed by proper tenses. Because in Polish there are only three tenses, the perfectiveness and imperfectiveness is expressed by separate verbs, e.g.:

Infinitive: to do, to make
robić (Imperf.) – Wczoraj robiłem zadanie, kiedy przyszedł kolega. / eng. I was doing an assignment yesterday when a friend came by.
zrobić (Perf.) – Wczoraj wieczorem zrobiłem zadanie, a potem czytałem książkę. / eng. I did my homework last night and then read a book.

Aspect Versus Tense

Because  perfective verbs refer to the completed actions, in consequence they have only two tense: the past tense (here speaker knows that the action has been completed) and the future tense forms (here the speaker expresses his belief or will that the action will be completed), e.g.:

Past Tense: Wczoraj wieczorem zrobiłem zadanie, a potem czytałem książkę. / eng. I did my homework last night and then read a book.

Future Tense: Zrobię to zadanie jutro popołudniu, kiedy przyjadę do domu ze szkoły. / eng. I’ll do this homework tomorrow afternoon when I get home from school.

Future tense of the perfective verbs is the so called simple future, In this case we use the present tense forms in the meaning of future (verbs robić and zrobić are inflected according to the same patterns), e.g.,

Adam robi zadanie. / eng. Adam does the job.

Adam zrobi zadanie. / eng. Adam will do the job.

Imperfective verbs have three tenses: past, present and future, e.g.:

Wczoraj robiłem zadanie, kiedy przyszedł kolega. / eng. I was doing an assignment yesterday when a friend came by.

Teraz nie mam czasu, bo robię zadanie. / eng. Now I don’t have time because I’m doing an assignment.

Będę robić to zadanie jutro po południu, kiedy przyjdę ze szkoły. / I will be doing this assignment tomorrow afternoon when I come home from school.

Imperfective Aspect

When do we use imperfective aspects?

1) when we plan to do something for a long time, when it will be a process (e.g., all evening, all night, two hours, for three days, etc.), e.g.:

Jutro cały dzień będziemy jechać na wycieczkę. / eng. Tomorrow we will go on a trip all day.

2) when we will do something many times (e.g., often, every week, twice a month, etc.), e.g.:

Kiedy będę na urlopie, każdego dnia będę jeździć na rowerze. / eng. When I’m on vacation, I’ll go cycling every day.

3) when we know we won’t finish what we plan, e.g.:

Jutro będę robić mój kurs prawa jazdy. / eng. I’m going to do my driving course tomorrow (I know I won’t finish it, it will only be a few hours).

Future Tense

We create it in two ways. Both require the verb być (to be) in the future tense.

After the verb być (to be) in the future tense, we have either:
1) the infinitive of imperfect verbs (e.g., jechać (to go by vehicle); pić (to drink); spać (to sleep)

2) Past tense forms – 3rd person singular on, ona, ono (he/she/it) or plural oni, one (they/one)

Plural

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