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Even though I am a native English speaker, I am old and have forgotten my English grammar lessons. Need a little help to understand why I would write a sentence that way using the words going to even though I've always done it that way.

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  • Would you please give some more detailed context?
    – WXJ96163
    Mar 20, 2020 at 12:42
  • Not sure I can. The sentence I used in my initial posting was just made up to model the use of "going to" to say something and illustrates how I normally speak or write. BTW I am from the deep South if that means anything to you.
    – Jim Maley
    Mar 20, 2020 at 14:41

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It's a form of the future tense in English.
ThoughtCo.com: "expressing future tense with 'will' and 'going to'

As to why "going to" is used as future tense in English, I'm going to pass on that one. Maybe someone else will chime in.

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    I'll chime in and say it's pretty much a universal metaphoric feature of (all?) natural languages that we're continuously "traveling" from the Present to the Future - so whereas we came from the Past, we're going to the Future.
    – FumbleFingers
    Mar 20, 2020 at 17:21
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    I can add that French futur proche (je vais + infinitive) and Spanish futuro próximo (voy a +infinitive) explicitly use the same metaphor, with a verb meaning "to go".
    – Jack O'Flaherty
    Mar 20, 2020 at 19:27

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