Introduction to verb tense
About this video
David introduces verb tense as the way verbs place actions in time: past, present or future. Using the verb 'talk', he shows the simple forms: I talk (present), I will talk (future) and I talked (past).
You'll be able to
- explain what verb tense is.
- name the three basic times a verb can show.
- put a simple verb into the past, present and future.
Key words
- tense
- The ability of a verb to show when something happens in time.
- present
- Happening now, as in 'I talk'.
- future
- Happening later, as in 'I will talk'.
- past
- Already happened, as in 'I talked'.
Transcript
- [Voiceover] Hello grammarians. Today I wanna introduce the idea of the verb tense, and the way I wanna do that is to express the following, if you can master grammatical tenses, you will become a time wizard, a literal, actual time wizard because tense is nothing more than the ability of verbs to situate themselves in time, specifically in three different times so in the past, the present, or the future it can happen.
When we're talking about a verb, a verb can happen now, a verb can happen later, and a verb can have happened in the past, then. That's basically it, and if you master tenses, you will be able to tell stories that span all of time, and I think that ability is kind of astonishing that language can express that sort of idea.
To just give a very simple example, I'll just take the word talk and put it in these three basic tenses. Now, it does get more complicated than this, sure, but we'll cover that later, so if i take the verb to talk and I put it in the present, I would just say, "I talk," the most basic iteration, "I talk."
In the future, "I will talk," and in the past, "I talked." This is the simple form of every English tense, past, present, future. If you can command all of these, you will be a time wizard. That's you, you can learn anything. David out.
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