![\"1344916754891_6755928\"](\"http:\/\/www.languagetrainers.com.au\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/11\/1344916754891_6755928-e1386182867148-300x203.png\")
<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
The word \u2018tense\u2019 comes from the Old French \u201ctens,\u201d which in turn comes from the Latin \u201ctempus,\u201d which translates to \u2018time.\u2019<\/p>\n
The tenses are an all important aspect of language, they\u2019re the way in which we refer to something we\u2019ve done or are going to do — something we should do then, is learn a little more about them.<\/p>\n
Tense is how we locate an event in relation to time; we have the past, the present, and the future. In English we have a number of words and conjugations that we use in reference to the particular tense we\u2019re talking in; while the changes are often simple enough, sometimes there are little things that we take for granted, making it especially difficult for somebody new to the language.<\/p>\n
One little thing that makes this subject more elaborate and complex is the reference point; things change even more when talking about the past, present or future in relation to another point before, at or after said event.<\/p>\n
Consider these examples, all of which I hope you\u2019ll agree mean or reference something slightly different: \u201cI had written,\u201d \u201cI have written,\u201d \u201cI will have written,\u201d \u201cI wrote,\u201d \u201cI am writing,\u201d \u201cI will write,\u201d \u201cI write\u201d and \u201cI would write.\u201d<\/p>\n
That\u2019s a little more difficult right? Well, what\u2019s more, they all have names; let\u2019s start with the\u00a0present:<\/p>\n
Simple Present:\u00a0<\/b>\u201cHe speaks.\u201d<\/p>\n
Present Progressive:\u00a0<\/b>\u201cHe is speaking.\u201d<\/p>\n
Present Perfect Simple:\u00a0<\/b>\u201cHe has spoken.\u201d<\/p>\n
Present Perfect Progressive:\u00a0<\/b>\u201cHe has been speaking.\u201d<\/p>\n
Now how about the\u00a0past:<\/p>\n
Simple Past:\u00a0<\/b>\u201cHe spoke.\u201d<\/p>\n
Past Perfect Simple:\u00a0<\/b>\u201cHe had spoken.\u201d<\/p>\n
Perfect Past Progressive:\u00a0<\/b>\u201cHe had been speaking.\u201d<\/p>\n
The\u00a0future:<\/p>\n
Future I Simple:\u00a0<\/b>\u201cHe will speak.\u201d Also, \u201cHe is going to speak.\u201d<\/p>\n
Future II Simple:\u00a0<\/b>\u201cHe will have spoken.\u201d<\/p>\n
Future I Progressive:\u00a0<\/b>\u201cHe will be speaking.\u201d<\/p>\n
Future II Progressive:\u00a0<\/b>\u201cHe will have been speaking.\u201d<\/p>\n
Many languages use tenses in different ways, English has very similar uses to Germanic languages and Japanese, containing two morphological tenses in past and non-past (which covers both present and future); Latin has six, as it contains relative-tenses (another subject to explore); The Pama-Nyungan Languages have different tenses in remote-past, recent-past, today-past, present, near-future, and remote-future. Ancient Greek is a little different as it also contains \u2018moods,\u2019 a way to distinguish aspect only, such as\u00a0indicative<\/i>, or \u201cbounded,\u201d and\u00a0optative<\/i>, or \u201cwished for.\u201d There are even some languages that don\u2019t use tense, they\u2019re called — rather understandably —\u00a0tenseless<\/i>\u00a0languages, and such languages are Burmese, Dyirbal and Chinese.<\/p>\n
What languages do you know that use tenses differently to English? Is this a subject with a little more detail than you first thought?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The word \u2018tense\u2019 comes from the Old French \u201ctens,\u201d which in turn comes from the Latin \u201ctempus,\u201d…","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[66,19,12,13,92,89],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-946","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-chinese","category-english","category-french","category-german","category-greek","category-japanese"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.languagetrainers.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/946"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.languagetrainers.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.languagetrainers.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.languagetrainers.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.languagetrainers.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=946"}],"version-history":[{"count":13,"href":"https:\/\/www.languagetrainers.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/946\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":999,"href":"https:\/\/www.languagetrainers.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/946\/revisions\/999"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.languagetrainers.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=946"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.languagetrainers.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=946"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.languagetrainers.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=946"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}