Unlike tenses in English grammar, verbs do not change forms in Chinese grammar, instead, additional words are added to indicate different tenses. For instance, if I want to address “I am having dinner”, I would say “wǒ zài chī fàn”. On the other hand, if I want to describe “I had dinner”, I would say “wǒ chī guò fàn le”. Besides, if I want to express “ I am going to have dinner”, I would use “wǒ yào chī fàn”. In short, verbs are remaining the same form as they are in different tenses such as present tenses, past tenses and future tenses.

In Chinese, words such as “guò”, “yǐ jing”, “céng jīng”, “wán” are utilized to imply past tenses, whereas words like “zhèng zài”, “zài”, “zhèng” indicate present tenses. In other cases, the indicators including “yào”, “jiāng”, “hui”, “jiāng yào” depict future tenses.

Therefore, it is important to remember tenses indicators to identify different tenses in Chinese.