Je commencerai aussitot que tu arrivera.
I get the first part is I will start as soon as....but why for arriver, you need to use le future simple?
"I will start as soon as you will arrive"?
You need the future tense because the action of arriving will happen in the future. It's not happening now, is it?
Thank you for using the Jiskha Homework Help Forum. For the futur simple, it will be aller + infinitive. Yes, you can use the true futur, if you have studied it = je commencerai aussitôt que (OR dès que) tu arriveras (vous arriverez). You can use the futur simple = je vais commencer, BUT after aussitôt que OR dès que, if the action refers to the future (as this does), French uses the future or, less frequently, the future perfect. In all other cases, the tense used after these conjunctions is similar to the English tense.
Perhaps you misunderstood where the futur simple was to be used?
Mme
P.S. Sorry, futur proche is aller + infinitive! Futur simple is also called the Future Indicative.
Mme
In French, when using the expression "as soon as" (aussitôt que), the verb that follows it is usually in the present tense, not the future. Therefore, the correct translation of the sentence "Je commencerai aussitôt que tu arriveras" would be "I will start as soon as you arrive."
The reason you do not use the future tense after "as soon as" is because this expression already implies that the action will happen in the future. So using the future tense would create redundancy. Instead, the present tense is used to convey the immediate sequence of events—the action of starting is dependent on the action of arriving.
To clarify further, here's a breakdown of the sentence structure:
- "Je commencerai" (I will start): This is a future tense construction indicating that the speaker will start a future action.
- "aussitôt que" (as soon as): This expression introduces a condition or trigger that needs to occur for the action to take place.
- "tu arriveras" (you arrive): This is in the present tense, as it refers to the immediate action of arriving that triggers the speaker to start.