Transcript of Lesson 3.1 - Tense

In today's lesson, I'm going to quickly cover 'tense' in English grammar and then introduce you to how it is combined with 'aspect' in order to create all the different verb tenses in English.

Are you ready? Let's go.

So, technically, there are only two true verb tenses in English.

I know! What the hell!?

I only just discovered this whilst researching this lesson as well.

Before I break things down, though, let's talk a little bit about what 'tense' is.

A 'tense' is a verb-based method used to express time and sometimes continuation or complicatedness of an action, event, or state in relation to the time of speaking. And it comes from the Latin 'tempus' meaning 'time'.

So, verbs are conjugated into different tenses in order to place an action event or state in time: Past, Present, or Future.

As we mentioned in the previous lesson, English only has to true verb tenses: the Simple Present Tense and the Simple Past Tense.

Both of these you'll already be familiar with as an advanced English learner, right?

The Simple Present Tense: I go, you walk, he studies.

And The Simple Past Tense: I went, you walked, he studied.

But if English only has two tenses, how on earth does it express the future tense?

And what about the other more complicated versions of the Past, Present and Future?

As we covered earlier, English gets this job done by using 'periphrasis'.

Remember, that's just a big word that means English uses multiple words in order to form these other tenses instead of a single inflected verb.

So, in order to form all the other tenses in English, we use one or a combination of:

Modal verbs like 'will', 'would', 'should', 'can', 'might'.

Auxiliary verbs like 'be' and 'have'.

The present participle, that is 'verb + -ing', so 'walking', 'doing'.

And past participles like 'verb + ed', 'verb + en', and the irregulars. So, 'walked', 'done'.

So, to summarise tense.

'Tense' is used in order to cause a verb to show an action, state, or event happens in time.

There are only two true tenses in English: the Simple Present and the Simple Past tenses.

To form all other tenses in English, we have to use multiple other words including modal and auxiliary verbs, and present and past participles.

And remember, this is known as 'periphrasis'.