Whether you’re pursuing fluency in a particular language, or you enjoy studying multiple languages at once, you’re sure to encounter verb tenses and usages that don’t correspond with your native language. On top of that, you might face a lot of confusing technical terms.
If terms like “past anterior,” “present perfect continuous,” and “future subjunctive” make your head spin, fear not!
We’re going to take a straightforward look at these concepts to develop a practical understanding that will facilitate your language learning. We’ll also consider how various languages use different verb tenses, aspects, and moods to express similar ideas.
What is a tense?
Quite simply, a “tense” tells you when something happens — whether in the past, the present, or the future.
You’ll often see references to things like the “present perfect,” the “past imperfect,” or the “future subjunctive tense.” These tense names include their aspects or moods, which give us additional information.
A verb’s aspect can tell you if an action is completed or continuous, or if it’s done repeatedly or habitually.
A verb’s mood, on the other hand, isn’t cheerful or cranky; rather, it tells us if a statement is factual — or just something that’s likely, desirable, permissible, or demanded. Some languages even have a specific mood for asking questions.
Tenses, aspects, and moods are all grammatical categories, which are concepts we can use to talk about the relationships between words. Other familiar grammatical categories are verbs, nouns, genders, prepositions, and conjunctions.
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Moods and Aspects of Verbs
Here are some of the most common aspects and moods. These can refer to past, present, or future actions, depending on their tense.
Aspects
The simple aspect, sometimes called the “indefinite” aspect, only tells us that an action is factual. It does not directly indicate how long the action lasts or if it’s repeated.
The progressive (continuous) aspect describes an ongoing or incomplete action. The habitual aspect talks about actions that are done regularly, over and over. Both of these can be considered part of the imperfective aspect.
The perfect or perfective aspect is used for completed or self-contained actions, which don’t repeat or continue — regardless of when they happen.
Perfect vs. Perfective vs. Imperfect vs. Imperfective
Scholars debate the relationship of perfect or imperfect aspects to the perfective or imperfective ones.
For example, some linguists consider tenses like the present perfect and future perfect to be expressions of the perfective aspect.
Others argue that languages with perfect and imperfect aspects (and corresponding tenses) can’t possibly have perfective or imperfective aspects. That’s because such languages lack specifically perfective and imperfective verbs, like those found in many Slavic languages.
For instance, Russian uses the imperfective verb говорить to mean “to talk” and “to speak” when discussing repeated, habitual, or ongoing actions. For an event that happens once, at a specific point in time, Russian employs the perfective verb сказать, which also means “to talk” and “to speak.”
To add to the confusion, imperfect often refers to a tense found in Romance languages, which expresses ongoing or habitual actions in the past — similar to the past progressive in English (“I was walking”). Some linguists might contend that the imperfect and past progressive tenses have an imperfective aspect, even if they don’t use exclusively imperfective verbs.
The imperfective aspect can also be found in the future perfect progressive. This tense describes incomplete or ongoing actions that have yet to happen. For example, “Anna will have been learning French” indicates that Anna will have started to learn French at some point in the future and will continue to do so in the more distant future.
Moods
The indicative is one of the most common verb moods. There are two main variations within the indicative mood: The declarative is used for factual statements or statements of opinion, such as “Dogs are furry,” “Cats do not bark,” and “Owls like to surf the internet.” The interrogative is used to ask questions.
The imperative mood expresses direct requests and commands.
The conditional describes what might happen under certain conditions. In English, it’s usually paired with an “if” statement, such as “I could watch the film, if I’m not too tired.”
Rare in English, the subjunctive mood makes more frequent appearances in languages like German, French, and Spanish. It’s used for hypothetical situations, wishes, and desires.
There’s no time like the present - Image source
Tenses — a language-to-language comparison
Unless you’re learning a “tenseless” language, like Mandarin Chinese, Vietnamese, or Indonesian, you’re almost certainly going to have to deal with multiple past, present, and future tenses, which normally incorporate various aspects and moods.
We’ll take a simple verb, “to speak,” and compare each of these tenses for the first person singular of English, German, Spanish, and French, so you can see how they correspond.
| English Verb Tense | English Example “to speak” | German Example “sprechen” | Spanish Example “hablar” | French Example “parler” |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Present Simple | I speak | Present Indicative: ich spreche | Present Indicative: yo hablo | Present Indicative: je parle |
| Past Simple | I spoke | Preterite: ich sprach | Preterite: yo hablé | Passé composé/Preterite: j’ai parlé |
| Future Simple | I will speak | Future Indicative: ich werde sprechen | Future Indicative: yo hablaré (I will speak) OR Immediate/Near Future: yo voy a hablar (I am going to speak) | Future Indicative: je parlerai (I will speak) OR Futur proche (Near Future): je vais parler (I am going to speak) |
| Present Continuous (or Progressive) | I am speaking | Present indicative: ich spreche | Present Continuous: yo estoy hablando | Present indicative: je parle |
| Past Continuous (or Progressive) | I was speaking | Preterite: ich sprach | Imperfect: yo hablaba | Imperfect: je parlais |
| Future Continuous (or Progressive) | I will be speaking | Future Indicative: ich werde sprechen | Future Continuous: yo estaré hablando | Future Indicative: je parlerai |
| Present Perfect | I have spoken | Present Perfect: ich habe gesprochen | Present Perfect: yo he hablado | Passé composé/Preterite: j’ai parlé |
| Past Perfect | I had spoken | Pluperfect: ich hatte gesprochen | Preterite Perfect: yo hube hablado | Pluperfect: j’avais parlé |
| Future Perfect | I will have spoken | Future Perfect: ich werde gesprochen haben | Future Perfect: yo habré hablado | Future Perfect (also called the Future Anterior): j’aurai parlé |
| Present Perfect Progressive (or Continuous) | I have been speaking | Present Perfect: ich habe gesprochen | Present Perfect Progressive: yo he estado hablando | Passé composé/Preterite: j’ai parlé |
| Past Perfect Progressive (or Continuous) | I had been speaking | Pluperfect: ich hatte gesprochen | Pluperfect Progressive: yo había estado hablando | Pluperfect: j’avais parlé |
| Future Perfect Progressive (or Continuous) | I will have been speaking | Future Perfect: ich werde gesprochen haben | Future Progressive: yo habré estado hablando | Future Perfect: j’aurai parlé |
| Present Conditional | I would speak | ich würde sprechen | yo hablaría | je parlerais |
| Present Perfect | I would have spoken | Subjunctive Pluperfect: ich hätte gesprochen | yo he hablado | (Indicative) Conditional Perfect: j’aurais parlé |
| Past Historic (a literary tense used in French, also called the passé simple [simple past]) | ———- | ———- | ———- | nous gagnâmes (we won/we had won) |
Notice that in several cases, English and Spanish have a continuous tense, whereas French and German lack separate continuous tenses. This means that “ich sprache” and “je parle” would translate to both “I speak” and “I am speaking” in English.
Formula for Tenses
Here are several formulas you can use to make different verb tenses in English, German, Spanish, and French. Although some tenses are formed by conjugating a single verb, others involve combinations of words.
| Verb Tense | English Formula | German Formula | Spanish Formula | French Formula |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Present Simple | Subject + regular verb (v1) + -s/-es Irregular verbs, such as “to be” and “to know,” follow their own patterns. | Conjugate by verb type (for regular -en, -eln, or -ern verbs) or for a specific irregular verb. | Conjugate by verb type (for regular -er, -ir, or -ar verbs) or for a specific irregular verb. | Conjugate by verb type (for regular -er, -ir, or -re verbs) or for a specific irregular verb. |
| Past Simple | Subject + verb (v2) infinitive +-ed as an ending Irregular verbs, such as “to think” and “to come,” follow their own patterns. | Conjugate by verb type (for regular -en, -eln, or -ern verbs) or for a specific irregular verb. | Conjugate by verb type (for regular -er, -ir, or -ar verbs) or for a specific irregular verb. | Passé composé: Present tense of avoir (to have) or être (to be) + past participle of verb (stem +é [for masculine subjects] or +ée [for feminine subjects] |
| Future Simple | Subject + will/shall + verb (v1) | Subject + werden in the present tense + infinitive | Subject + infinitive of the main verb, with -e/-es/-e/-emos/-eis/-en added as an ending | Infinitive of verb + variation of present tense of avoir (-ai, -as, -a, -ons, ez, ent) for subject added as an ending |
| Near Future | Subject + to go (present continuous tense) + infinitive of the main verb | Subject + present tense of the main verb, sometimes with an indication of a time frame | (Subject) + ir (to go) in the present tense + a (“to”) + infinitive of the main verb | Subject + aller (to go) in the present tense + infinitive of the main verb |
| Present Continuous | Subject + is/am/are + Verb(+ing) | No present continuous in German; present simple used in its place. | Subject + present tense of estar (to be) + past participle of main verb | No present continuous in French; present simple used in its place. |
| Past Continuous | Subject + was/were + Verb(+ing) | No real continuous tense; preterite used instead. Conjugate by verb type (for regular -en, -eln, or -ern verbs) or for a specific irregular verb. | Conjugate by verb type (for regular -er, -ir, or -ar verbs) or for a specific irregular verb. | Conjugate by verb type (for regular -er, -ir, or -re verbs) or for a specific irregular verb. |
| Future Continuous | Subject + will be/shall be + verb(+ing) | Subject + werden in the present tense + infinitive of the main verb Uses the simple future tense, as German does not have a continuous future. | Subject + estar (to be) in the future tense + past participle of the main verb | Conjugate by verb type (for regular -er, -ir, or -re verbs) or for a specific irregular verb. Uses the simple future tense, as French does not have a continuous future. |
| Present Perfect | Subject + has/have + verb (v3) | Subject + haben (to have) or sein (to be) in the present tense + past participle of the main verb | Subject + haber (to have) in the present tense + past participle of main verb | Passé composé: Present tense of avoir (to have) or être (to be) + past participle of verb (stem +é [for masculine subjects] or +ée [for feminine subjects]) |
| Past Perfect | Subject + had + verb (v3) | Conjugate by verb type (for regular -en, -eln, or -ern verbs) or for a specific irregular verb [preterite] | Subject + haber (to have) in the imperfect + past participle of main verb [pluperfect tense] For events in the more distant past, we can use the preterite perfect tense: Subject + haber (to have) in the preterite + the past participle of the main verb | Subject + avoir (to have) or être (to be) in the imperfect + past participle of main verb [pluperfect tense] For events in the more distant past, we can use the past anterior: Subject + avoir (to have) or être (to be) in the past historic + past participle of main verb |
| Future Perfect | Subject + will have + verb (v3) | Subject + present tense of werden (will) + the past participle of the main verb + the present tense of haben (to have) or sein (to be) | Subject + future indicative tense of haber (to have) + past participle of main verb | Subject + simple future of avoir (to have) or être (to be) + past participle of main verb |
| Present Perfect Continuous | Subject + has/have + been + verb(+ing) | No present perfect continuous in German; the present perfect can be used in its place. | No present perfect continuous in Spanish; the present continuous can be used in its place. | No present perfect continuous in French; the passé composé can be used in its place. |
| Past Perfect Continuous | Subject + had + been + verb(+ing) | Subject + haben (to have) in the preterite tense + the past participle of the main verb [No past perfect continuous in German; can use pluperfect tense, with an indicator that the action is completed.] | (Subject) + haber (to have) in the imperfect tense) + past participle of estar (to be) + past participle of the main verb | Subject + avoir (to have) in the imperfect tense + the past participle of the main verb [No past perfect continuous in French; can use pluperfect tense, with an indicator that the action is completed.] |
| Future Perfect Continuous | Subject + will have been + verb(+ing) | No future perfect continuous in German; the future perfect can be used in its place. | (Subject) + haber (to have) in the future tense) + past participle of estar (to be) + past participle of the main verb | Subject + simple future of avoir (to have) or être (to be) + past participle of main verb Uses the future perfect tense, as French does not have a future perfect continuous tense. |
| Conditional (Present) | Subject + would/could + infinitive of the main verb | Subject + conditional present tense of werden (will) + infinitive of the main verb | Subject + infinitive of main verb + imperfect ending for the subject Often used as part of a si (if) clause. | Subject + infinitive of main verb + imperfect ending for the subject Often used as part of a si (if) clause. |
| Conditional Perfect | Subject + could/would + present tense of “to have” + past participle of the main verb | Subject + haben (to have) in the imperfect tense + the infinitive of the main verb + the infinitive of können (to be able to) [modal perfect tense] | (Subject) + poder (to be able to) in the conditional tense + the infinitive of haber (to have) + the past participle of the main verb | Subject + avoir (to have) or être (to be) in the conditional present + past participle of the main verb |
| Imperative | Infinitive of the verb (minus the “to,” and often, minus the subject) | Conjugate by verb type (for regular -en, -eln, or -ern verbs) or for a specific irregular verb. | Conjugate by verb type (for regular -er, -ir, or -ar verbs) or for a specific irregular verb. | Conjugate by verb type (for regular -er, -ir, or -re verbs) or for a specific irregular verb. |
What’s the difference between the present perfect and compound past?
Andrew Rossiter, a professional linguist who writes about learning English, points out that the term “present perfect” is just not logical when we consider how this compound tense is used in English — and compare it to other languages. After all, the “present perfect” tense describes past actions.
Of course, English isn’t the only language with confusing compound tenses. In various Spanish dialects, the “compound perfect past tense” can be used to refer to something that was in the past and still remains in the present, something that is either complete or incomplete, something that happened very recently, and something that happened “just this second.”
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