The Marathi Future Tense: Saying What You Will Do

Why does मी जाईन (mī jāīn, I will go) not care whether "I" is a man or a woman, when मी गेलो versus मी गेले (the past-tense forms) absolutely do?

That question is the whole story of the Marathi future tense in miniature. Once you've fought through the ergative past and its gender-agreeing verbs, the future tense feels almost like a reward: the endings shift by person and number, never by gender. Learn six endings for one verb and you can conjugate almost any verb in the future, across almost any subject, without stopping to ask "is this a man or a woman talking?" That doesn't mean the future tense has no traps. It has three, and this post walks through each one.

The Basic Future: One Verb, Six Endings

Take जाणे (jāṇe, to go). Strip the infinitive ending -णे and you get the root जा-. Add the future personal endings and you get the full paradigm:

Pronoun	Marathi	Romanization	English
मी (I)	मी जाईन	mī jāīn	I will go
तू (you, informal)	तू जाशील	tū jāśīl	You will go
तो/ती/ते (he/she/it)	तो जाईल	to jāīl	He will go
आपण / आम्ही (we)	आपण/आम्ही जाऊ	āpaṇ/āmhī jāū	We will go
तुम्ही (you, polite/plural)	तुम्ही जाल	tumhī jāl	You will go
ते (they)	ते जातील	te jātīl	They will go

Six forms, six endings: -ईन, -शील, -ईल, -ऊ, -आल (shortened here to -ल after आ), -तील. Notice what's missing from that list: any split for masculine, feminine, or neuter. तो जाईल and ती जाईल are identical. Compare that to the past tense, where तो गेला and ती गेली diverge on the very same verb, and you can see why learners breathe a little easier once they reach this chapter.

The pattern generalizes. Take करणे (karaṇe, to do): मी करीन, तू करशील, तो करेल, आम्ही करू, तुम्ही कराल, ते करतील. Take बोलणे (bolaṇe, to speak): मी बोलेन, तू बोलशील, तो बोलेल, आम्ही बोलू, तुम्ही बोलाल, ते बोलतील. Once you've drilled one common verb through all six endings, the shape transfers almost mechanically to the next one.

Two of those six pronouns deserve a note. आपण and आम्ही share the same जाऊ ending here, but they aren't interchangeable everywhere else in the grammar, आपण is the inclusive "we" (you and I together) while आम्ही excludes the listener, a distinction the Marathi pronoun guide covers in full. The future tense happens to erase that difference at the verb level, but the choice of pronoun still carries meaning in the sentence.

Where Gender Does (and Doesn't) Touch the Future

Here's the part worth stating directly, because it contradicts what most Hindi-background learners expect: the Marathi future tense does not agree with gender at all. Not the subject's gender, not an object's gender. This is a real structural difference from the past tense, where transitive verbs agree with the object's gender under the ergative construction, and intransitive verbs agree with the subject's.

मी जाईन. (Mī jāīn.) I will go. (identical whether the speaker is male or female) मी गेलो. (Mī gelo.) I went. (masculine speaker) मी गेले. (Mī gele.) I went. (feminine speaker)

Same subject, same verb root, but the past tense splits and the future doesn't. This single fact is worth memorizing on its own: if you're unsure whether a Marathi verb form needs to reflect gender, check the tense first. Future, never. Present habitual, only mildly (मी जातो/जाते). Past, heavily. The Marathi verb tenses introduction lays out how all three tenses compare side by side, including the full ergative mechanics that make the past tense so much harder to produce on the fly.

Negating the Future: नाही, and the Trap of जाणार नाही

Negating a simple future statement follows the same pattern you'd use for the present: the participial -त form of the verb, followed by नाही.

• मी जाईन. (Mī jāīn.) I will go.
• मी जाणार नाही. (Mī jāṇār nāhī.) I will not go.

Notice that the negative doesn't actually use जाईन's own root form with नाही tacked on. Marathi routes future negation through the जाणार form (the near-future participle covered in the next section) plus नाही, not through जाईन नाही. Saying मी जाईन नाही is understood, but it isn't how a native speaker would phrase it; जाणार नाही is the natural, idiomatic negative. This is exactly the kind of small mismatch that's easy to get wrong if you're translating word by word from the affirmative.

नाही also inflects here the same way it does elsewhere in the language, matching the subject:

Subject	Negative future	Romanization	English
मी / तो / ती / ते	जाणार नाही	jāṇār nāhī	will not go
तू	जाणार नाहीस	jāṇār nāhīs	you will not go (informal)
तुम्ही / ते (plural)	जाणार नाहीत	jāṇār nāhīt	you/they will not go

The Marathi negation guide covers नाही's full inflection pattern (नाही, नाहीस, नाहीत) across every tense, which is the same skeleton you're using here, just applied to जाणार instead of a present-tense participle.

Learners coming from Hindi often try to build the negative future the way Hindi does, with a single invariant नहीं placed before the verb: मैं नहीं जाऊँगा. Marathi's नाही sits after the verb complex, not before it, and it changes shape with the subject. Drop the Hindi word order into a Marathi sentence and a native listener will still understand you, but it reads as a translation rather than as Marathi. The fix is mechanical once you see it: build जाणार first, then attach the correct नाही form at the end.

जाणार and येणार: "Going To" Versus the Plain Future

Marathi has a second future construction that English speakers reach for constantly without realizing it's grammatically distinct: जाणार (jāṇār, going to / about to go) and येणार (yeṇār, going to / about to come). These aren't alternate spellings of जाईन and येईन. They're a separate near-future form, built from the verb root plus -णार, usually paired with a form of आहे.

मी उद्या मुंबईला जाणार आहे. (Mī udyā Mumbaīlā jāṇār āhe.) I am going to go to Mumbai tomorrow. आमची आत्या उद्या येणार आहे. (Āmacī ātyā udyā yeṇār āhe.) Our aunt is coming tomorrow.

Compare the plain future मी जाईन (I will go, a statement about the future, somewhat open-ended) with मी जाणार आहे (I am going to go, a plan already in motion, closer to a decision that's been made). English draws roughly the same line between "I will go" and "I'm going to go," so the distinction should feel familiar even before you've fully internalized the Marathi mechanics. The auxiliary आहे is what carries tense information in this construction: swap it for होता/होती and you shift the whole phrase into "was going to," describing a plan that existed in the past. For everyday use, treat जाणार + आहे as your "plan or intention" future and जाईन/जाशील/जाईल as your "prediction or promise" future.

Irregular and High-Frequency Verbs in the Future

A handful of verbs show up constantly and are worth conjugating on their own, starting with असणे (asaṇe, to be), whose future stem doesn't look like its present-tense आहे at all:

Pronoun	असणे (to be)	करणे (to do)	देणे (to give)	घेणे (to take)
मी	मी असेन	मी करीन	मी देईन	मी घेईन
तू	तू असशील	तू करशील	तू देशील	तू घेशील
तो/ती/ते	तो असेल	तो करेल	तो देईल	तो घेईल
आम्ही	आम्ही असू	आम्ही करू	आम्ही देऊ	आम्ही घेऊ
तुम्ही	तुम्ही असाल	तुम्ही कराल	तुम्ही द्याल	तुम्ही घ्याल
ते	ते असतील	ते करतील	ते देतील	ते घेतील

असणे's future (असेन, असशील, असेल, असू, असाल, असतील) is the form you'll need constantly for predictions and plans: मी उद्या घरी असेन (mī udyā gharī asen), "I will be home tomorrow." देणे and घेणे mostly follow the regular pattern, with a small irregularity in the तुम्ही form, where द्याल and घ्याल contract rather than spelling out देआल/घेआल. That contraction is worth memorizing as its own small exception rather than deriving it from the rule.

तो मला उद्या पैसे देईल. (To malā udyā paise deīl.) He will give me money tomorrow. ती चहा घेईल का? (Tī cahā gheīl kā?) Will she have (take) tea?

करणे deserves a second look here too, because it's the verb you'll actually use most, folded into compound expressions like काम करणे (to work) and फोन करणे (to call). मी उद्या हे काम करीन (mī udyā he kām karīn), "I will do this work tomorrow," is a sentence structure you'll reuse constantly, just swapping the noun in front of करीन. Once करणे's six future forms are automatic, every compound verb built on it inherits the same conjugation for free, you're not learning a new paradigm each time, only a new noun.

Practice Set: Present to Future

Turn each present-tense sentence into the future. Cover the answer column and check yourself after.

Present	Future	Romanization
मी जातो. (I go.)	मी जाईन.	mī jāīn
तू खातेस. (You eat.)	तू खाशील.	tū khāśīl
तो करतो. (He does.)	तो करेल.	to karel
ती येते. (She comes.)	ती येईल.	tī yeīl
आम्ही बोलतो. (We speak.)	आम्ही बोलू.	āmhī bolū
तुम्ही देता. (You give.)	तुम्ही द्याल.	tumhī dyāl
ते घेतात. (They take.)	ते घेतील.	te ghetīl
मी नाही जात. (I don't go.)	मी जाणार नाही.	mī jāṇār nāhī
ती आहे. (She is.)	ती असेल.	tī asel
आम्ही जातो. (We go.)	आपण/आम्ही जाऊ.	āpaṇ/āmhī jāū

Ten sentences, ten endings, the same six-way pattern repeating with barely any variation. That repetition is the point: once -ईन/-शील/-ईल/-ऊ/-आल/-तील are automatic, you're not learning a new grammar rule for every new verb, you're just plugging a different root into a fixed slot.

What the Future Tense Tells You About Marathi

Marathi's grammar makes you work hardest in the past tense and rewards you in the future. Once you're past the ergative construction and its gender-agreeing verb endings, the future tense is close to the simplest system in the language: six endings, no gender, one small irregularity in देणे and घेणे to memorize by rote. That asymmetry isn't an accident. Completed actions in Marathi carry information about what happened to what; predicted or intended actions don't need to, because nothing has happened yet to agree with. If you've been dreading verb conjugation since you hit the past tense, the future is where the language finally lets up.

The Learn Marathi app by Brightwood Apps covers the full future paradigm, including जाणार आहे and the irregular देणे/घेणे forms, with native-speaker audio so you can hear मी जाईन and मी जाणार आहे said naturally before you try producing the distinction yourself.