Tenses

“Tense” means “time.” In fact, the Spanish word for “tense” is “tiempo,” which is also the Spanish word for “time.” When we talk about tense, we’re talking about the time of the action—past, present, future. “Tense” and “mood,” therefore, are totally different concepts. “Mood” says something about the perception of the action, not about the time of the action.

English has six tenses: present he talkspresent perfect he has talked past he talkedpast perfecthe had talked future he will talkfuture perfecthe will have talked The future tense MUST have “will.” The present perfect MUST have “has” or “have.” The past perfect MUST have “had.” The future perfect MUST have “will have.”

The present, past, and future tenses are pretty straightforward. The present tense is used for what’s going on right now (“I’m writing”) or what’s going on habitually in the present (“I eat lunch at noon every day”). The past tense is used to tell something that happened in the past (“I fell down yesterday”). The future tense is used to talk about some future action (“Tomorrow I will read a book”).

“Perfect” means “complete,” so all three perfect tenses are, in a sense, past tenses, even the future perfect tense.

The PRESENT PERFECT TENSE is used to show something that happened in the past but that is still going on: I have lived here for five years. That sentence means that I lived here in the past and still live here. The present perfect is also used when the past action is perceived to have an impact on or a close relationship with the present: Why don’t you go to Subway with me? – I have eaten already.

The PAST PERFECT TENSE is the past of the past. Whenever you’re talking in the past tense and you want to talk about something that happened even before the thing you’re talking about, you use the past perfect tense: Yesterday I dropped a piece of crystal and broke it. My husband yelled and yelled at me because I had broken two other pieces the day before. The dropping of that one piece of crystal happened in the past (yesterday), but the breaking of the other two pieces happened even before that, so that action is in the past perfect tense. Last week my friends gave me some wacky toe socks because I had told them that my feet are always cold. The giving of the socks happened in the past (last week), but my telling them that my feet are always cold happened even before that, so that action must be in the past perfect tense.

The FUTURE PERFECT TENSE is the past of the future, in a manner of speaking. It shows something that will be complete at some point in the future. By the year 2050 we will have found a way to make a car run on water is the future. Some time before then, a car running on water will be a reality. In 2050, our future, that invention will be a past (completed) act.

Spanish Tenses The good news is that Spanish has the same six tenses that English has and uses them the same way. The bad news is that it has three other tenses. Spanish Tenses presentpresent perfect preterit (past)pluperfect (past perfect) imperfect (past) futurefuture perfect conditionalconditional perfect As you can see, the past tense is divided into two tenses in Spanish, and Spanish has conditional and conditional perfect tenses.

The preterit and imperfect are two or three slide shows in themselves, as you should know by this point. The conditional and conditional perfect translate with “would”: CONDITIONAL I would buy a car if I had more money. CONDITIONAL PERFECT I would have bought a car if I had had more money. The conditional MUST have “would”; the conditional perfect MUST have “would have” (in the English translation.

You know how to form the present, the preterit, and the imperfect. The next series of slides will teach you how to form all the other tenses.