Most learners expect to study verb tenses in their new language. But if you only know about languages with their origins in Europe, like Spanish and English, you might be surprised to find that some languages don't use tense at all: They don't conjugate verbs for past, present, or future!

So how do languages express the past or the future… if they don't have a past or future tense?! These languages have a totally different way of envisioning events and actions, and this system is used by many indigenous languages from Mexico.

Here's what these Mexican languages can teach us about verbs and time!

Tense 101

First, let's take a look at English verbs. In English, tense is used to mark whether an action or activity takes place in the past, present, or future:

A diagram of a horizontal line divided into thirds, with each third labeled "past," "present," and "future," from left to right.

The English past tense is typically shown with the -ed ending and the future tense uses the auxiliary verb will, so talk becomes talked for the past and will talk for the future.

But this isn't the only way the world's languages divide up time!

Are there languages that can't talk about the past or future? 

Well… the answer isn't so simple!

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In some languages, what matters is whether an event is complete or incomplete.

In addition to tense, some languages use another way of thinking about time: aspect. 

Instead of past, present, and future, grammatical aspect expresses whether the state or action lasts or ends. For example, have you finished talking to Bea, or are you still talking to Bea? Is the talking to Bea something ongoing? 

In the sentence I talked to Bea at night, the action of talking has a beginning and an end, so it's a completed action.

The same diagram of "past," "present," and "future," now with the first segment for "past" marked with a thick blue line to contrast with the rest of the line in gray. The beginning of the "past" segment is labeled with "start" at the left and "end" at the right.

And in I talk to Bea in the morning, the action has a beginning but not an end, since you can talk to her every day and no ending is specified. This activity is prolonged and doesn't ever have a specific end! It's an incomplete action.

The same diagram of "past," "present," and "future," with the thick blue line for the "past" segment, a lighter blue line for the "present" segment, and an even lighter blue line for the "future" segment. The very beginning of the "past" segment is labeled "start" on the left, and there is no "end" label.

Some languages that use aspect—and that don't use tense—are from Mexico. Here's how they work.

Mayan T'aan

Mayan T'aan is a language spoken in the Yucatan Peninsula in Mexico. It uses the marker -laj to indicate that an action has been completed. You can see it in the middle of these words:

Mayan T'aan Meaning of each part Translation
Kul-laj-en sit-completed-I I sat
Kul-laj-ech sit-completed-you You sat

And for actions that have not been completed, Mayan T'aan uses lak:

Mayan T'aan Meaning of each part Translation
Bíin kul-lak-en someday sit-incomplete-I Someday I will sit
Bíin kul-lak-ech someday sit-incomplete-you Someday you will sit

O'dam

O'dam is a language spoken in the mountains of Durango, Mexico. It also does not express time, but rather use short part-words called particles: The particle ba- is for complete actions and -t is for incomplete actions.

O'dam Meaning of each part Translation
Ba-jimia’-iñ completed-go-I I am already going
Ma’n bɨx xi-m-kuidaru-t one all imperative
-us-take.care-incomplete		 Everyone need to take care

There are also special part-words in O'dam that combine information about the grammatical person who did the action and the aspect of the action:

O'dam Meaning of each part Translation
Pu ji-ñich dhu bhammi certainty go-I.completed first.hand information direction I am already going

Yühü

Finally, the language Yühü, also called Otomi, is spoken in several states in central Mexico. This language is a tonal language, which means that each syllable has a specific pitch, like having its own musical note. Tone is just as important as the individual sounds themselves, and different tones can change the meaning of a word! 

In Yühü, the aspect information goes before the verb to distinguish completed and incomplete actions—and this contrast also causes a change in the tone on the verb syllable, as represented by the marks above the vowels:

Yühü Meaning of each part Translation
I pá he-incomplete go he is going
Bi mǎ He-complete go He went

Languages can be timeless!

The languages of Mexico show us the diversity of the world's languages, and even just how different the languages of the Americas can be! All languages have the ability to express the same ideas—and they can use very different grammar tools to do so.