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Nel0506 Posted 7 years ago
Grammar

Languages that don't use continuous tenses

Could someone tell me a little more about which languages don't recognise continuous tenses and how this concept could best be explained? (Perhaps with a link.)

Thank you.

  

Top answer

org/wiki/Continuous_and_progressive_aspects The link above mentions languages that have continuous tenses (although in some cases it only says how the language paraphrases something similar to a continuous tense). Anyway, with about 6500 languages in the world, and only these few that have the continuous tenses, I imagine many more languages don't have continuous tenses than do — just about every language in the world except those mentioned in the article above (fewer than 20). CJ

— CalifJim

  • org/wiki/Continuous_and_progressive_aspects The link above mentions languages that have continuous tenses (although in some cases it only says how the language paraphrases something similar to a continuous tense).
  • Anyway, with about 6500 languages in the world, and only these few that have the continuous tenses, I imagine many more languages don't have continuous tenses than do — just about every language in the world except those mentioned in the article above (fewer than 20).
  • CJ
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4 Answers
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Continuous_and_progressive_aspects

The link above mentions languages that have continuous tenses (although in some cases it only says how the language paraphrases something similar to a continuous tense).

Anyway, with about 6500 languages in th

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I'll add to what CJ has said that my native Finnish has a structure that can be used in pretty much the same ways as the English continuous tenses. It just isn't called continuous in grammar books. Grammatical terms very from language to language.

Just like the English tense, it is formed by using the Finnish equivalent of to be, but instead of the present participle, the inessive

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In Mandarin, we also have the continuous tense. We don't change the form of verbs like English. Instead, we add a time adverb or an https://www.writtenchinese.com/the-complete-guide-to-chinese-sentence-particles/ to the sentence to indicate the past, the present or the future.

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Thanks. In teaching ESL, it's still common/fashionable to recommend that students not translate. In learning a new language, it just took me a year and a few textbooks for me to find out only ONLINE that there are different ways to express intent for future, because the language uses subjunctive without time words or modals. There's no progressive in the present but subjunctive about intent, o

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