Futur v avenir

Question

Est-ce qu'il y a une différence entre "futur" et "avenir"?J'ai appris "avenir" en tout cas, et "futur" pour dire "le futur simple" par exemple.

Accepted Answer

Hi Flo, 
You are correct; how you were taught is how I would have taught my students. 
However, language evolves and sometimes changes.
As Jim points out, the Académie française is quite pernickety about its use but nowadays and often both are used to say the future as a noun, a time that is ahead of you.
Think of the film "Back to the Future" which was translated in French to "Retour vers le Futur".
Take a look at this page which goes into some details about when you would or wouldn't use 'le futur' in French.
http://parler-francais.eklablog.com/avenir-futur
Hope this helps!

Answer

Bonjour Flo,
Very interesting point.
As I understand it both are strong synonyms, but L'avenir tends to relate to "from now on .."
Whereas Le futur is perhaps further out although if aller is employed then there is the option of near future or present tense can be used to express future according to context.
Difficult to be more precise because of the very strong synonymy.
https://www.dictionnaire-academie.fr/article/DNP0318
 
Perhaps a staff expert can help further.
Bonne journée
Jim