Future and conditional

Classical Latin's future CANTĀBŌ did not survive. One reason often given: once b and v merged in speech, CANTĀBIT 'will sing' and CANTĀVIT 'sang' sounded nearly the same. Spoken Latin replaced it with a phrase, CANTĀRE HABEŌ 'I have to sing', and in five sisters the two words fused into one: cantaré, chanterai, canterò, cantarei, cantaré. Romanian built its future differently, as we will see.

The 'we' and 'you all' forms use shortened 'have' (cantaremos, chanterons, canteremo), but the pattern is unmistakable. The seam was still visible in Old Spanish, which could slip a pronoun between the halves (dezir lo he 'I will say it'); formal Portuguese still can (far-se-á 'it will be done'), though Brazilians mostly say vou cantar instead. Italian canterò has -er- rather than -ar- because Tuscan turned unstressed ar into er.

Romanian alone took another road. Its standard future puts voi, vei, va, vom, veți, vor, an auxiliary from Latin 'want' (VOLŌ, spoken *VOLEŌ), before the infinitive, much as English uses 'will'. Everyday speech prefers o să cânt, an invariable o plus the subjunctive, or am să cânt 'I have to sing', with 'have' but as a separate word.

The conditional: a future seen from the past

The same recipe with the imperfect of HABĒRE, CANTĀRE HABĒBAM, gave Spanish and Catalan cantaría / cantaria, Portuguese cantaria and French chanterais: their endings are those of había and avais. Italian chose the perfect instead, CANTĀRE + HABUĪ (spoken *HEBUĪ), the source of ebbi 'I had': hence canterei. Old Italian poetry also used forms in -ia (canteria) that match Spanish. Romanian again uses a separate auxiliary: aș cânta, from an aș whose origin is disputed.