In Japanese, there are only two tesnes:
past and not-past. The complications in Japanese verb forms arise from the politeness forms. Technically, there are only 3, but there are so many other things that go into the mix that even asking for a favor is a sentence structure reserved for learning in second-year College Japanese. And of course, there are also two levels of humility (as far as I know) which are completely orthogonal to politeness levels of verbs. And due to the nature of Japanese politeness levels, even adjectives are conjugated like verbs, so that one still knows tenseness, even with a one-adjective, informal sentence. L ---In [email protected], <anartaxius@...> wrote : I think tenses could be reduced for present-centred people. She is/isn't singing. Because there is memory and in dealing with life there is the need to anticipate sometimes, there are two variants: In memory she is/isn't singing. In imagination she is/isn't singing hence. All the other possible tenses are loops in the mind when it creates additional imaginary states from these three. ---In [email protected], <LEnglish5@...> wrote : Many people marvel at all the tenses there are in other languages, but in fact, medieval scholars revised English to ensure that every Latin tense could be translated properly to English. You may or may not use them in your daily language, but they're all there, by design: How to Translate Verbs http://www.uvm.edu/~bsaylor/latin/cheatsheet.html How to Translate Verbs http://www.uvm.edu/~bsaylor/latin/cheatsheet.html Description of Form Latin Form Translation(s) in English Idiom present imperative active cane! canite! sing! (one of you) sing! (you all) present indicative active canit View on www.uvm.edu http://www.uvm.edu/~bsaylor/latin/cheatsheet.html Preview by Yahoo
