“‘Love’, this English word: like other English words it has tense. ‘Loved’ or ‘will love’ or ‘have loved’. All these specific tenses mean love is time-limited. Not infinite. It only exist in particular period of time. In Chinese, love is ‘爱’ (ai). It has no tense. No past and future. Love in Chinese means a being, a situation, a circumstance. Love is existence, holding past and future. If our love existed in Chinese tense, then it will last for ever. It will be infinite.”*

– Xiaolu Guo, A Concise Chinese-English Dictionary for Lovers

It is often said that Chinese is one of the easier languages to learn because it has simple grammar: ‘no tenses’. How can a language not have such a quintessential element that indicates when something exists or occurs?

Tense is generally marked by inflectional affixes, and Chinese as a language almost entirely lacks inflection. Verbs typically only take one grammatical form, meaning that the verb form remains the same irrespective of when the event took place.

Going back to the quote above, the verb to love – 爱 (aì) – never changes regardless of whether it occurs in the past, present or future. Instead, the time at which the action takes place can be indicated by lexical semantics, grammatical particles and discourse principles. Verbs can be combined with temporal adverbs or aspectual particles to establish temporal references. Sometimes, temporal information is also conveyed implicitly by context, so it is not always necessary to explicitly express the time frame in which something occurs.

While Chinese may not be morphologically marked for tense, aspect is heavily encoded in the language. Some examples of how aspect works include the use of particles 了 (lè) and 过 (guò) which indicate perfective aspect:

我爱了他

(wǒ aì lè tā)

[I] [have loved] [him]

我爱过他

(wǒ aì guò tā)

[I] [have/had loved] [him] [once]

It is necessary to acknowledge that 过 is not only an aspectual particle but can also be a lexical verb, an adjective, and an adverb when used in different contexts, illustrating the complexity of Chinese.

在 (zaì) is a progressive marker, while 着 (zhè) can be a progressive marker or simply a static clause in which it just means ‘I love’.

我在爱他

(wǒ zaì aì tā)

[I] [am loving] [him]

我爱着他

(wǒ aì zhè tā)

[I] [am loving] [him]

我爱着

(wǒ aì zhè)

[I] [love]

Of course, the examples above are just some ways in which time is encoded in Chinese without the use of tense. Other examples of languages that do not have a tense system include Thai, Burmese and Malay.

Interestingly, research has shown that speakers of languages without a tense system have better long-term planning in general, as they do not differentiate their future self from their present self. As a result, they are more likely to be financially prudent and less likely to deal with drug abuse, alcoholism and so on, in comparison with speakers of languages with strong future tenses.

*the author is aware that the quote may prove a bit contentious in terms of being linguistically precise but she wishes that the semantics be appreciated rather than it be criticised.

Eugenia Ang