# Do certain languages have verb tenses that we don't have in English? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [October 10, 2006, 6:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-certain-languages-have-verb-tenses-that-we-dont-have-in-english/375904 "2006-10-10T06:52:46Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![cckerberos](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/f0a364/32.png) [@cckerberos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/cckerberos)\ **Post date:** [October 10, 2006, 10:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-certain-languages-have-verb-tenses-that-we-dont-have-in-english/375904/21 "2006-10-10T22:08:07Z")
[QUOTE=Themenin] Would you say that Japanese has more distinct tenses than English ? When I was teaching English I used to warn my students that we don’t conjugate much, but we have a lot of finicky tenses. Are the Japanese volitional and imperative two distinct tenses - do they conjugate for all persons ? [/QUOTE] Japanese verbs do not conjugate differently according to subject. I’m not a linguist by any stretch of the imagination, but I would say Japanese has more distinct tenses than English. It certainly has more verb conjugations than English. ---
**Author:** ![CookingWithGas](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cookingwithgas/32/485_2.png) [@CookingWithGas](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CookingWithGas)\ **Post date:** [October 10, 2006, 11:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-certain-languages-have-verb-tenses-that-we-dont-have-in-english/375904/22 "2006-10-10T23:46:27Z")
[QUOTE=Ellis Aponte Jr.] Slight tangent, but English also has a weird tense where “future” wording is used to indicate completed events, as when a football announcer says, “that will make it Chiefs 20, Raiders 17” **after** the Chiefs kick a field goal. [/QUOTE] I think this is an eccentricity rather than anything that’s in the grammar. Kind of like, “That’d be up the butt, Bob.” ---
**Author:** ![guizot](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/guizot/32/3636_2.png) [@guizot](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/guizot)\ **Post date:** [October 11, 2006, 12:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-certain-languages-have-verb-tenses-that-we-dont-have-in-english/375904/23 "2006-10-11T00:26:47Z")
[QUOTE=Cat Jones] … a guy called Michael Lewis - in his “The English Verb” he proposes a new naming system for English verb forms which does away with the misleading time references. [/QUOTE] One problem with the way we refer to English grammar is that English speakers studied Latin grammar long before they really paid attention to English grammar. So they imposed the termonology of Latin grammar upon that of English. [QUOTE=CookingWithGas] I think this is an eccentricity rather than anything that’s in the grammar. Kind of like, “That’d be up the butt, Bob.” [/QUOTE] This is not an “eccentricity.” This is the common usage of “will” to demonstrate that something has been determined in the immediate moment. It’s like when the phone rings, you say, “I’ll get it.” [QUOTE=cckerberos] Japanese verbs do not conjugate differently according to subject. I’m not a linguist by any stretch of the imagination, but I would say Japanese has more distinct tenses than English. It certainly has more verb conjugations than English. [/QUOTE] English really doesn’t have any conjugation. Just 3rd person singular in the simple present, a holdover that won’t go away for some reason. ---
**Author:** ![Johanna](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/johanna/32/8318_2.png) [@Johanna](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Johanna)\ **Post date:** [October 11, 2006, 12:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-certain-languages-have-verb-tenses-that-we-dont-have-in-english/375904/24 "2006-10-11T00:44:56Z")
The Turkic languages have a special tense for reporting action that was not personally witnessed or verified by the speaker. This is the verb tense used for spreading rumors. It can also be used for inference, like if you didn’t see the snow falling but you wake up, see snow on the ground and say “It (must have) snowed overnight.” Bulgarian has this verb tense too, probably influenced by contact with Turkish. ---
**Author:** ![capybara](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/capybara/32/202_2.png) [@capybara](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/capybara)\ **Post date:** [October 11, 2006, 1:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-certain-languages-have-verb-tenses-that-we-dont-have-in-english/375904/25 "2006-10-11T01:15:00Z")
The Germans use the same conjugation as the subjunctive (I think?) also in ‘indirect discourse’–indireckte Rede-- which is used a lot in the newspapers; it kind of removes what’s reported one degree. “The police chief said that (tense shift) the perpetrator killed blah blah.” “She told him that (shift) blah blah.” Sounds like what you’re describing in Turkic, a bit. ---
**Author:** ![Hari\_Seldon](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hari_seldon/32/5173_2.png) [@Hari\_Seldon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hari_Seldon)\ **Post date:** [October 11, 2006, 3:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-certain-languages-have-verb-tenses-that-we-dont-have-in-english/375904/26 "2006-10-11T03:30:51Z")
Strictly speaking English has only two tenses, one of which is called past (and semantically is the perfect tense) and a second that is called present, but is actually essentially timeless. (Look at, “I have an appointment tomorrow morning” and tell me it is present tense.) In addition, there is a subjunctive which is called a mode, but there is no practical difference. I gather it is essentially gone in England, but not in my American dialect. When I wrote a book that happened to be published in England, the copy editor marked a whole bunch of phrases of the form, “it is required that … have …” and he/she wanted the verb to be “has”. As for the compound tenses, well, there is not much to say except they are ways of expressing time. Among all the phrases “I will go”, “I am about to go”, “I am going to go”, “Tomorrow I go”, and probably others, there is no point in singling out one and calling it the future. Similarly, the various compound pasts. It all comes from the absurd attitude that Latin grammar was grammar and a model for all other languages, so English grammar had to be built on that model. Notice that the compound past, which is called perfect, is semantically imperfect. We say that Shakespeare wrote 37 plays, but that Stoppard has written whatever number he has. When he dies the verb will change to “wrote” since his career will be complete. French has seven tenses, a couple of which are scarcely used. But I was quite surprised in reading Maigret stories (a good way to learn French) that Simenon had even lowlife criminal types recounting their stories in the simple past, which is normally little used. I assume there are languages with many more. ---
**Author:** ![Spectre\_of\_Pithecanthropus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/spectre_of_pithecanthropus/32/12343_2.png) [@Spectre\_of\_Pithecanthropus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Spectre_of_Pithecanthropus)\ **Post date:** [October 11, 2006, 3:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-certain-languages-have-verb-tenses-that-we-dont-have-in-english/375904/27 "2006-10-11T03:56:23Z")
[QUOTE=cckerberos] Japanese has a number of tenses that don’t exist in English (at least, I think they don’t) : - the causative tense (to be forced/allowed to do X) - the passive-causative tense - the conditional tense (if I do X) - the imperative tense (commands) - the volitional tense (let’s do X) Japanese verbs can also be conjugated as negatives. Not exactly what you’re going for, but Japanese also lacks [ambitransitive verbs](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ambitransitive_verb), which makes learning the language difficult for English speakers. [/QUOTE] Aren’t most of these moods or voices, not tenses? Most Romance languages have two preterit tenses corresponding to our simple past, as in, “I went to the store”. IIRC in French, one is used almost exclusively in writing, and the other is more common in conversation. The Romance languages also have a true future tense, which is absent in English and most or all other Germanic languages. Even Icelandic doesn’t have a future tense, unless I’m wrong and **UselessGit** happens by and can set me straight. (Note, constructions like “I will go” or “I’m gonna leave” are not examples of a true future tense; they are only “workarounds” to express the idea; in much the same way completely tenseless languages use adverbs of time to express the idea of tense. ---
**Author:** ![guizot](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/guizot/32/3636_2.png) [@guizot](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/guizot)\ **Post date:** [October 11, 2006, 3:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-certain-languages-have-verb-tenses-that-we-dont-have-in-english/375904/28 "2006-10-11T03:56:33Z")
[QUOTE=Hari Seldon] Strictly speaking English has only two tenses, one of which is called past (and semantically is the perfect tense) and a second that is called present, but is actually essentially timeless. (Look at, “I have an appointment tomorrow morning” and tell me it is present tense.) [/QUOTE] Exactly what I was trying to say. Why must we express time frame soley with verb morphology? “I’m going to the dentist next Thursday.” As in Chinese, the adverbial “Thursday” (providing today is Monday, for example) shows that the statement refers to the future. The problem is that many language teachers assume that tense is only about time. ---
**Author:** ![Spectre\_of\_Pithecanthropus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/spectre_of_pithecanthropus/32/12343_2.png) [@Spectre\_of\_Pithecanthropus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Spectre_of_Pithecanthropus)\ **Post date:** [October 11, 2006, 3:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-certain-languages-have-verb-tenses-that-we-dont-have-in-english/375904/29 "2006-10-11T03:57:31Z")
) Dammit! ---
**Author:** ![Spectre\_of\_Pithecanthropus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/spectre_of_pithecanthropus/32/12343_2.png) [@Spectre\_of\_Pithecanthropus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Spectre_of_Pithecanthropus)\ **Post date:** [October 11, 2006, 5:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-certain-languages-have-verb-tenses-that-we-dont-have-in-english/375904/30 "2006-10-11T17:07:59Z")
[QUOTE=guizot] Exactly what I was trying to say. Why must we express time frame soley with verb morphology? “I’m going to the dentist next Thursday.” As in Chinese, the adverbial “Thursday” (providing today is Monday, for example) shows that the statement refers to the future. The problem is that many language teachers assume that tense is only about time. [/QUOTE] But that’s exactly what tense **is**. It’s the morphological change in a verb to express differences in the time of the action. We can, indeed, say “next Thursday” to mean the future, but that isn’t tense, it’s something else. We can also say “shall” or “will” to indicate a future action, but technically speaking that isn’t tense, either. ---
**Author:** ![CJJ](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/ecc23a/32.png) [@CJJ](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CJJ)\ **Post date:** [October 11, 2006, 7:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-certain-languages-have-verb-tenses-that-we-dont-have-in-english/375904/31 "2006-10-11T19:07:44Z")
[QUOTE=Spectre of Pithecanthropus] But that’s exactly what tense **is**. It’s the morphological change in a verb to express differences in the time of the action. We can, indeed, say “next Thursday” to mean the future, but that isn’t tense, it’s something else. We can also say “shall” or “will” to indicate a future action, but technically speaking that isn’t tense, either. [/QUOTE] Many posters here are interpreting “tense” strictly in terms of inflecting a single verb, e.g. “see” and “saw” are different tenses of the verb “to see”, but “will see” is not because it uses an auxiliary. I don’t believe this is accurate; in particular the use of an auxillary with a participle clearly conveys tense, e.g. I have/had seen, I was seeing. Latinists call such verb forms “periphrastic”, and there are several examples in the passive perfect forms (e.g. _amatus sum_) and the various gerundive constructions for future active (e.g. _amaturus sum_). These are regarded as separate tenses by Latin grammarians despite the fact that they are not direct inflections of the root verb. ---
**Author:** ![guizot](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/guizot/32/3636_2.png) [@guizot](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/guizot)\ **Post date:** [October 11, 2006, 8:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-certain-languages-have-verb-tenses-that-we-dont-have-in-english/375904/32 "2006-10-11T20:27:50Z")
[QUOTE=Spectre of Pithecanthropus] But that’s exactly what tense **is**. It’s the morphological change in a verb to express differences in the time of the action. [/QUOTE] Not always, if I your point is what I think (thought) it is (was). That is, the morphology we’re talking about doesn’t always express a difference in time of the action. For example: “It’s about time we fixed the stereo.” The morphology of the verb _fix_ here doesn’t express a difference in the time of the action. (In fact the action is realized.) Of course, you could say that because this is subjunctive that it has no tense at all, in which case I would agree with you. ---
**Author:** ![CJJ](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/ecc23a/32.png) [@CJJ](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CJJ)\ **Post date:** [October 11, 2006, 8:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-certain-languages-have-verb-tenses-that-we-dont-have-in-english/375904/33 "2006-10-11T20:51:13Z")
[QUOTE=guizot] “It’s about time we fixed the stereo.” The morphology of the verb _fix_ here doesn’t express a difference in the time of the action. (In fact the action is realized.) Of course, you could say that because this is subjunctive that it has no tense at all, in which case I would agree with you. [/QUOTE] The sentence in question is an expression of relief after, say, working all week on a torn apart stereo, e.g. “Wow, after three trips to the HW store and these late nights with the soldering iron, it’s about time we fixed the stereo.” If so, this is an expression of the fact that an action (fixing) is completed before the present time, and so this is perfect tense. The sentence can also be taken as an exhortation, e.g. “With the guests expecting to hear music at the party next week, it’s about time we fixed the stereo.” “Fixed” here means “_completing_ the job of fixing”; again an apparent expression of perfect tense. The problem though is we can’t really determine the relative time against which the tense is measured. Sure we emphasize that we want the fixing to be completed (presumably before the party), but exactly when is still in doubt. Part of me thinks that the sentence implies that the fixing is an ongoing chore, i.e. something that has already started but only just or soon to be completed at the time in question. This is clearer if we alter the sentence to “With the guests expecting to hear music at the party next week, it’s about time we _ **fix** _ the stereo.” This makes me think the fixing has not yet started, and so is expected to complete in the future. This is more a contrast of verbal aspect than tense (and not a very cut-and-dried one, to be sure), but there it is. ---
**Author:** ![guizot](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/guizot/32/3636_2.png) [@guizot](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/guizot)\ **Post date:** [October 12, 2006, 12:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-certain-languages-have-verb-tenses-that-we-dont-have-in-english/375904/34 "2006-10-12T00:16:20Z")
[QUOTE=CJJ\*] The sentence in question is an expression of relief after, say, working all week on a torn apart stereo, e.g. “Wow, after three trips to the HW store and these late nights with the soldering iron, it’s about time we fixed the stereo.” If so, this is an expression of the fact that an action (fixing) is completed before the present time, and so this is perfect tense… [/QUOTE] The example I gave was not a good one. Try this: “The condition of our city’s streets is deplorable. Year after year we elect politicians who promise to fill potholes and repave, but they always seem to forget about it once in office. It’s about time we elected someone who will take care of this. Vote for Quigley for Mayor.” I doubt that it should be thought of as the perfect aspect. And it’s clear that, as far as the speaker is concerned (assuming the statement is sincere) we definitely haven’t elected anyone yet who will definitely take care of the streets. [QUOTE=CJJ\*] I don’t believe this is accurate; in particular the use of an auxillary with a participle clearly conveys tense, e.g. I have/had seen, I was seeing. Latinists call such verb forms “periphrastic”, and there are several examples in the passive perfect forms (e.g. amatus sum) and the various gerundive constructions for future active (e.g. amaturus sum). These are regarded as separate tenses by Latin grammarians despite the fact that they are not direct inflections of the root verb. [/QUOTE] As I mentioned above, using models of for the study of Latin grammar to describe English can just lead to more confusion. For all I know, the terms are completely different and unrelated. When linguists talk about English, they consider perfect and progressive forms to be the aspect, not the tense. Anyway, I don’t really care what you want to call it. I’m talking about how people _use it_. I was just saying that English speakers use the forms normally used for reference to the past in other ways. And you use present perfect aspect to refer to the past. Every language is distinct, and I think that the terms needed to describe one language aren’t necessarily useful to describe another. I think the OP wasn’t really concerned with tense per se, but rather verb forms in general that communicate concepts that English verbs themselves do not. ---
**Author:** ![Spectre\_of\_Pithecanthropus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/spectre_of_pithecanthropus/32/12343_2.png) [@Spectre\_of\_Pithecanthropus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Spectre_of_Pithecanthropus)\ **Post date:** [October 12, 2006, 12:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-certain-languages-have-verb-tenses-that-we-dont-have-in-english/375904/35 "2006-10-12T00:21:51Z")
[QUOTE=guizot] Not always, if I your point is what I think (thought) it is (was). That is, the morphology we’re talking about doesn’t always express a difference in time of the action. For example: “It’s about time we fixed the stereo.” . [/QUOTE] I think that construction is more related to a conditional subjunctive, which almost always is the same as the simple past. “If we fixed the stereo, then we could listen to music tomorrow.” This looks like the past, but we’re really talking about now. “If I had done better in math in school…” I’m talking about my school days. “Had done” looks like pluperfect and would imply a time even more remotely in the past, but it still refers to my time in school. ---
**Author:** ![JKellyMap](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jkellymap/32/15880_2.png) [@JKellyMap](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JKellyMap)\ **Post date:** [October 12, 2006, 2:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-certain-languages-have-verb-tenses-that-we-dont-have-in-english/375904/36 "2006-10-12T02:14:17Z")
Perhaps not strictly different tenses, but certainly different verb forms, are quite interesting in Yucatec Maya. For example, apparently there are different verb endings depending on the relative spatial position of the speaker and listener, such as if one is inside a house while the other is outside. Or so I gather from a brief look at William Hanks’ book _Referential Practice_; perhaps this will come clearer when I get around to reading it carefully. ---
**Author:** ![Frylock](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/ce7236/32.png) [@Frylock](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Frylock)\ **Post date:** [October 12, 2006, 3:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-certain-languages-have-verb-tenses-that-we-dont-have-in-english/375904/37 "2006-10-12T03:57:38Z")
Any linguists or people familiar with linguistics participating in this thread? I am wondering whether the term “tense” has a scientific meaning or if it is part of folk grammar. -Kris ---
**Author:** ![Frylock](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/ce7236/32.png) [@Frylock](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Frylock)\ **Post date:** [October 12, 2006, 4:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-certain-languages-have-verb-tenses-that-we-dont-have-in-english/375904/38 "2006-10-12T04:02:58Z")
[QUOTE=JKellyMap] For example, apparently there are different verb endings depending on the relative spatial position of the speaker and listener, such as if one is inside a house while the other is outside. [/QUOTE] At first, I was thinking you’ve got to be mistaken. But then I remembered there are languages which conjugate verbs differently according to relative _social_ position of speaker, addressee, and referent. (Japanese, for example.) If that can be true, then it is at least just plausible that a language might conjugate differently based on spatial relations. -FrL- ---
**Author:** ![Spectre\_of\_Pithecanthropus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/spectre_of_pithecanthropus/32/12343_2.png) [@Spectre\_of\_Pithecanthropus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Spectre_of_Pithecanthropus)\ **Post date:** [October 12, 2006, 7:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-certain-languages-have-verb-tenses-that-we-dont-have-in-english/375904/39 "2006-10-12T07:10:23Z")
[QUOTE=Frylock] Any linguists or people familiar with linguistics participating in this thread? I am wondering whether the term “tense” has a scientific meaning or if it is part of folk grammar. -Kris [/QUOTE] I’m not a linguist, but I did minor in it in college. Tense does have a specific technical meaning in linguistics which is narrower than that in everyday usage, or even the usage of language teachers. The basic difference is that in teaching language to others, compound tenses such as English or German future tense, or future perfect, (as in “will have done”), are considered tenses, much as they are in everyday language. Linguists usually would only consider the non-compound inflections to be tenses, however, which in Germanic languages are only two–past and present. Admittedly, linguistics is not an exact science and there is undoubtedly some variations in this usage even among different schools of thought in the field. ---
**Author:** ![guizot](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/guizot/32/3636_2.png) [@guizot](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/guizot)\ **Post date:** [October 12, 2006, 3:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-certain-languages-have-verb-tenses-that-we-dont-have-in-english/375904/40 "2006-10-12T15:43:35Z")
[QUOTE=Frylock] At first, I was thinking you’ve got to be mistaken. But then I remembered there are languages which conjugate verbs differently according to relative _social_ position of speaker, addressee, and referent. (Japanese, for example.) If that can be true, then it is at least just plausible that a language might conjugate differently based on spatial relations. -FrL- [/QUOTE] If you’re talking about honorifics, I’m not sure that would be called a conjugation. In any case, English once did something akin to that (_thou art, you are_). And yes, as **Frylock** , as **Spectre** has noted, there is a specific “scientific” meaning for the term tense. but I don’t think that was meant in the OP. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-certain-languages-have-verb-tenses-that-we-dont-have-in-english/375904.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-certain-languages-have-verb-tenses-that-we-dont-have-in-english/375904.md?page=3)