Future tense

No, not another unemployment blog post. Another commonplace insight blog post.

This one was from my spanish class in which the future tense is introduced:

Ahora, yo ir a ensenar el caso futuro.

Today I am going to teach the future tense.

And the insight is that the future action is supplied by the "going to" part--NOT by the classic tense based construction of "ensenire" (will teach), but by the introduction of the verb "ir" (to go) and a connector to the infinitive "ensenar" (to teach).

And the next surprising insight is that this is true in BOTH spanish and english, in exactly the same way. El professor dice: Espanol y inglais son muy similar.

And the really astonishing thing is that this is much more the common way of expressing the future tense in both languages!

You think on this a little while and then you get it--it's an understanding of time as a dimension, "going" from now to the expected.

The comparison breaks down in the way that english also uses helper words to establish verb tense, while spanish uses the inflected verb endings. But in those helper words we find a construction of a similar flavor in the word "will." Surely the meaning of this word is not precisely congruent with its meaning as our motive principal, our will, but it's strongly suggestive.

I will go. It will be.