Breakdown of Dentro de vinte anos, o veículo voador terá chegado à cidade.
ter
to have
o ano
the year
vinte
twenty
a
to / at (direction)
a cidade
the city
chegar
to arrive
o
him/it (m)
dentro de
inside / within (a timeframe)
o veículo
the vehicle
voador
flying
Questions & Answers about Dentro de vinte anos, o veículo voador terá chegado à cidade.
Why use terá chegado instead of the simple future chegará?
Terá chegado is the Futuro Composto do Indicativo (Future Perfect). We use it here because the arrival is an action that will already be fully completed before the twenty-year timeframe is up. If you used chegará, it would just state that the arrival will happen, without emphasizing that it will be a finished event by that specific deadline.
The lesson mentions using haver as an alternative. Could I say haverá chegado here?
Yes, you can use haverá chegado. Both ter and haver work as auxiliary (helper) verbs for this tense. However, in modern European Portuguese, ter is far more common in everyday speaking and writing. Using haver is correct but sounds much more formal or literary.
Why does the sentence use à cidade instead of na cidade to mean "in the city"?
In European Portuguese, the verb chegar takes the preposition a (to) for destinations, rather than em (in). You are literally saying that the vehicle arrived "to" the city. In this sentence, the preposition a merges with the feminine definite article a (the) to form the contracted word à.
Could I use daqui a instead of dentro de for the future timeframe?
They are very similar, but dentro de vinte anos specifically means "within twenty years", emphasizing the span of time before a deadline. Daqui a vinte anos means exactly "twenty years from now". Because the Future Perfect tense focuses on an action completing before a certain deadline, dentro de is a very natural fit for this sentence.
Learn Dentro de vinte anos, o veículo voador terá chegado à cidade and more in Portuguese
All course content and exercises are completely free — no paywalls, no trial periods, no signup needed.
- ✓ Practice with interactive exercises
- ✓ Track your progress with spaced repetition
- ✓Learn at your own pace — completely free