What is “tense”?
In linguistics, “tense” refers to the “time” at which the action of a verb takes place (in real life). Because different languages in the world have different grammars, tense is shown in different ways too.
For example, some languages have verbs that change their forms to show tense. English, German, and Japanese are examples of languages that have this feature. In English, for example, the base verb “play” changes its form to “played,” with the additional ending “-ed,” to show past tense.
Other languages have other ways of showing tense, or in other words, the time at which the action of a verb takes place. For example, in Cantonese, verbs do not change forms like in English, German, or Japanese to show tense—in fact, verbs and all other words in Cantonese cannot change their forms.
Rather, in Cantonese grammar, we rely on other elements outside the verb, for example, time adverbs, to express the time in which the action takes place. For example, in “我今日去呢間餐廳” and “我聽日去呢間餐廳“, the action of the verb “去" takes place at different times and has different “tenses” (future and past respectively); however, the form of the verb does not change.
There is a misconception among language students when comparing languages like English and Cantonese that a language like English “has tense” while a language Cantonese “has no tense”. In fact, every language has a grammatical strategy for showing the time at which an action takes place—they might just do so differently. English happens to show tense by changing its verb forms, and Chinese does not.
It is very helpful to have a systematic understanding of the different strategies that our native language and target foreign language have for expressing a grammatical feature like tense.
For example, if native Cantonese speakers are learning English, it would be helpful for them to understand that Cantonese verbs do not change forms to show tense, while English verbs do.
This way, you can approach the whole tense system in English verbs with much more awareness. Instead of asking (often unhelpful) questions like “why is tense in English ‘so hard’?” and “why are all these tense forms necessary when they don’t exist in Chinese?”, you would be able to understand that changing verb forms to show tense is simply a feature of English. You could then learn the specific forms in a much more conscious and straightforward manner.
「時態」（tense）是甚麼?
語言學中，「tense」（時態）是指某動詞「在現實中」發生的時間。世界上每種語言雖然都可以表達無盡的意思，但它們被不同的文法規範著，因此時態也會以不同的方式呈現。
有些語言會透過轉變動詞字形以顯示出時態，像是英文、德文和日文就有著這種特性。以英文為例，基本動詞「play」會在字尾加「-ed」，將字形更改為「 played」以顯示過去式的時態。
其他語言會有其他呈現時態的方法，以顯示動作發生的時間。例如廣東話中的動詞，並不會像英文、德文和日文一般轉變字形 － 實際上，廣東話中的所有字詞都是不能轉變字形的。
在廣東話的文法中，我們是依靠動詞以外的其他元素（例如時間副詞）來顯示動作發生的時間。例如「我今日去呢間餐廳」和「我聽日去呢間餐廳」，動詞「去」在上述兩句中均發生在不同的「現實時間點」，並且有不同的時態 （分別在「未來」和「過去」），不過其動詞字形卻沒有改變。
在比較類似英文和廣東話的語言時，學生經常會出現一種誤解，認為類似英文的語言才「有tense 」，而類似廣東話的語言則「沒有tense 」。事實卻是，每種語言都有自身的一套文法策略來顯示某動作在現實發生的時間，只是方式不同而已。英文會利用轉變字形來顯示字形，中文則不會。
我們應該更有系統地去理解母語與所學習的外語在表達（像「時態」之類的）文法特徵上的不同方式。如果廣東話為母語的人士正在學習英文，而他們知道廣東話的動詞不會轉字形，反而英文動詞卻是透過轉變動詞字形來顯示時態，這對他們是絕對有幫助的，因為你可以更加清楚地掌握英文動詞的整個時態系統，而不再經常執著於一些（多數是無助於學習的）問題，像是「英文的時態為何這麼難?」，或者「中文也不需要，為何英文就必需因應時態來轉變字形? 」等等。你會理解，改變動詞字形以顯示時態不過是英文的一個特性，並能夠以一種更自覺和直接的方式來學習這些特定的字形。