How many verb tenses are there in English? - Anna Ananichuk

How many different verb tenses are there in a language like English? At first, the answer seems obvious — there’s past, present, and future. But it isn't quite that simple. Anna Ananichuk explains how thanks to something called grammatical aspect, each of those time periods actually divides further.

Lesson by Anna Ananichuk, directed by Luke Rotzler.

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[yyangcn]

The ironic thing is a lot of foreigners who have been studying English for many years would be more likely to know this than vast majority of native English speakers.

[nitutiberiu]

4 years of studying English grammar in school summed up in 4 minutes. :-))))
Thanks!

[demilvigi]

a "The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog" reference at 3:31 !

[stevied]

In Latin, “past perfect” is called the “pluperfect”. A combination of “plus” (more) and “perfectus” (completed). So the pluperfect tense is “more past” than the perfect tense. It makes a lot of sense when you think about it.

[annyzou]

"At first, the answer seems obvious: there's past, present and future.







bUt ThAnKs To SoMe ThInG cAlLeD gRaMaTiCaL aSpEcT"

[deborroni]

I think we can all agree on this:
If you went to school in America, you may* not be aware of all of this... And from what I've read in the comments, it's quite accurate. For some reason, native English speakers are not aware of all these tenses because we were just told, "This is the way it's always been, is, and will always be, " but they don't even explain the tenses in that sentence too. And it's not just tenses that are vaguely exlained... how many of us actually retain lessons on perfect English GRAMMAR and PUNTUATION usuage?

And a couple years ago, I would have been awed at this video too! The only reason why I'm not is because I have been learning Spanish at school for about 3 years now and little by little I started to become exposed to all the tenses. And it wasn't that I didn't know the tenses exist; I've used them for about 10 years now!! It's just that---this goes for most speakers whose first language is English---that I was not aware of the reason behind their usage.

Gosh, I could keep talking about this really, because learning languages is such a fascinating thing to me. In addition to English and Spanish, I also speak French and Lingala** with my family, so whenever I have to explain to my relatives conjugation in English---or anything English, for that matter---it's a hot mess!! But it's still fun. 😂

And my last point is that they forgot two other tenses that is vaguely referred to: the "imperfect" and subjunctive tense. And the subjunctive has like 5 other subtenses from what I remember. English speakers be like 🤣🤣

*may, meaning didn't want to offend those of you who already knew
**Bantu language native to The DR of Congo

Thanks to those who read the whole thing!

[durdleduc]

I think the main problem when it comes to discussing English’s verb tenses is that by saying we have 12 tenses, we’re implying they’re all unique and need to be individually learned. But, it’s just not how it works. We may have 12 individual tenses in total, but they overlap by pretty predictable patterns. Our tenses are created by putting together the verb’s tense itself (commonly in the form of a suffix) and helper verbs. “Have” or “has” implies that the action, in some form or another, was performed before this instance. Both “been” and “-ing” implies being in the middle of an action, etc etc. Yes, it adds up to 12 tenses, but you can learn all twelve by learning a few rules (and spending some time practicing).
This is different from languages like Spanish, which has a multitude of unique tenses, the conjugations of which are each unique and need to be individually memorized. Helper verbs barely play a part in tenses in Spanish. So, despite Spanish having a similar amount of tenses to English, it’s much harder to get them memorized in languages like Spanish as compared to English.

[claycopter]

That opening sentence was epic. The person who said it/wrote it down must be honored.

[obuyWw]

This had me recalled all the struggles during English classes. It's just all freaking confusing without practical examples.

[doggyrobbie]

While English may have a variety of auxiliary verb tenses, it interestingly only has 2 truly conjugated tenses, past and present. Compare that to Spanish, which has present, preterite (past), imperfect (past), future, conditional, present subjunctive, and the imperfect subjunctive. Of course both languages have several other tenses formed with past/present participles and an auxiliary verb as well.

[jesse]

Well technically the future tense is just a special case of the present tense where “will” is an auxiliary verb followed by a bare infinitive verb. English only has the past and present tenses in that sense. The future tense is the present tense indicating the future.

[purepassionhardstyle]

This video opened up old wounds *cries in Dutch*

[rehatas]

Welcome to freshman year of the highschool in Turkey.

[Thee_Sinner]

If there’s anything I learned from this video, it’s that fish wear pants.

[alef-]

Well in English at least there are only some verbs who don't change in the tense.
*Cries in portuguese*

[mrigayu]

I've never really understood the different tenses; however, this video has cleared up the questions I've had for the past four years of my life. Thank you so much for all the great videos you post, TED Ed!

[torin]

0:24 & 4:09 reference to _Akira_
1:51 Terraria hurt sounds
3:26 The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.

[marcelineraber]

That part which mentions that there are auxiliary words also applies to all of those words like "have, will, was, are, have been, will be, " and so on. So while English does essentially have those concepts, that's not actually grammatical tense (Also, most of those are aspect rather than tense, since it's referring to how the actions occurred in relation to time). Grammatical tense and aspect mean that the language has a different form of a verb to refer to that tense or aspect, like how French has "Je saute" - "I'm jumping, " "Je sautais" - "I was jumping, " and "Je sauterais" - "I will jump." Each is a different form of the same verb, but each means all of that tense and aspect information in just one word, and there are. French has, essentially, 20 different forms of each verb based on combinations of tense, aspect, and mood (a third category of verb modification which shows the speaker's attitude about the action). English, by contrast hasn't got nearly as many. It has three, four in the case of some irregulars. One for present: "jump, " one for present participle: "jumping, " one for past: "jumped." And the case for most irregulars: One for present: "see, " one for present participle: "seeing, " one for past: "saw, " and one for past participle: "seen." There isn't even a future. You express future by putting the word "will" in front of your verb. The concepts are there, of course, just not baked into the grammar.

[ContinualImprovement]

“Tense” instructions unclear - muscles stuck in static hold/pose.

[ignacioianniello]

Future is not a "tense" but a "time" A tense is a bare infinitive case + a suffix (s/es for the present and ed for the past) Since there is no suffix for the future and it can only be formed with auxiliary verbs, it is considered a time and not a tense in grammar.