Career Aspirations

Expressing Past Future: 'Il Futuro nel Passato'

When you are talking about the past and want to look forward to an event that was still in the future at that moment, you use the futuro nel passato (future in the past). In Italian, this is formed using the imperfect tense of dovere, volere, or potere, or more commonly, the conditional past (condizionale passato) of the main verb.

Key Rules

• Use the conditional past (e.g., avrei fatto, sarei andato) to express what someone would do in the future from a past perspective.
• Often introduced by past reporting verbs like sapevo che (I knew that) or pensavo che (I thought that).

Examples

Sapevo che avrei fatto carriera in quell'azienda.
I knew that I would get ahead in that company.

Credeva che sarebbe diventato amministratore delegato.
He believed that he would become CEO.

Common Mistakes

Avoid using the simple future (farò) when narrating past events. Always shift to the conditional past to respect the sequence of tenses. English speakers also tend to use the present conditional because English says "would do": in Italian it must be the past conditional — Sapevo che avrei fatto carriera, not *Sapevo che farei carriera; Ha detto che sarebbe venuto, not *Ha detto che verrebbe.