Ele não estará atrasado, terá outra desculpa.
He probably isn't late, he probably has another excuse.
Breakdown of Ele não estará atrasado, terá outra desculpa.
não
not / no
ele
he
ter
to have
estar
to be (temporary / location)
atrasado
late
a desculpa
the excuse
outro
other
Questions & Answers about Ele não estará atrasado, terá outra desculpa.
Why are the verbs in the future tense (estará, terá) when the translation uses the present tense?
This is the epistemic use of the future tense. In Portuguese, the future simple is often used to express a strong guess, probability, or assumption about something happening right now. Instead of saying what will happen in the future, estará means 'he probably is' (or 'he must be') and terá means 'he probably has'.
Could I just use present tense verbs with a word like provavelmente instead?
Yes! You could completely rephrase this as Ele provavelmente não está atrasado, provavelmente tem outra desculpa. Using the future tense is simply a more native, elegant way to express that same sense of probability without needing extra adverbs.
Why do we use estar (estará) instead of ser (será) with atrasado?
How would this sentence change if I were making a guess about why he was absent yesterday?
To express probability about a past event, you would swap the future tense for the conditional tense. It would become: Ele não estaria atrasado, teria outra desculpa (He probably wasn't late, he probably had another excuse).
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