There are only two tenses in English present and past.
There are two
tenses in English present and past.
I was shocked when
I read this sentence on British Council’s Webpage. I thought there must have
been a mistake, committed intentionally to get the attention of readers. I read the full article but it was not explained how it was. I Emailed and also post a
question. Within some hours they replied (as they usually do)
----
Hi Prakash,
It's a good
question. First, I should define what a tense is:
it is a form of a verb that
expresses time. For example, take and took are the present tense and past
tense of the verb take.
Technically
speaking, will take is not a
form of the verb take, because it
is not made by changing the form of take itself.
Instead, it is made by adding another verb (will)
which supplies the future time meaning. That's why we can't call will take a tense.
However, in common
and non-technical speaking, people do commonly say that will + infinitive verb is the
"future tense" (even though from a technical point of view, that term
is incorrect).
I hope that helps
to understand it.
Jonathan
The LearnEnglish
Team
British Council.
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Yes, there are two tenses in English. It is a form of a verb that expresses time. We have only simple present and simple past forms of a verb and we don’t have a form for the future tense. We have to use shall and will with the plural form of a verb.
At MIT College Pune, I attended an
international seminar in 2009. It was about Sant Dnyaneswara, the Redefinition of
Spirituality, Philosophy, and Hinduism. Dr Vishwanath Karad delivered a 45
minutes lecture. He explained, how we can live in present. There is no past or
future life. There is only a moment we live in. I remembered he said, “There is
not a future tense in English.” I thought,
“He is talking about philosophy.”
Yes, He was talking about philosophy. But on Wed, 11/01/2023 when I read the same sentence on the British council’s webpage, I got confused and realised after their reply that It cannot be a kind of philosophy or about philosophy.
It is a technical term in the English language grammar.
Prakash Kesari, India.
Language Lover, Learner.