For native french speakers?

Question

How many tenses are there in french language?

Answer 1

if u count the participles as tenses there would be 18 or else it would be 16
A- indicatif (mode)
1- indicatif present
2- indicatif passe compose
3-indicatif imparfait
4- indicatif plus-que-parfait
5- indicatif passe simple
6- indicatif passe anterieur
7- indicatif futur simple
8- indicatif futur anterieur

B- subjonctif (mode)
9- subjonctif present
10- subjonctif passe compose
11-subjonctif imparfait
12- subjonctif plus-que-parfait

C- imperatif (mode... for giving orders)
13- imperatif present
14- imperatif passe

D- conditionnel (mode)
15- conditionnel present
16- conditionnel passe (there are 2 forms to write this past)

E- participe (like participles in english)
17- participe present
18- participe passe

there are also 2 kinds of infinitives in french, one present and the other past

Answer 2

YOU SHOULDN'T ASK A NATIVE FRENCHIE!!!

They rarely learn them all. They only use 9, tops!
There are 17 or more.

FROM WIKI:
Verbs
Main article: French verbs
In French, as in English, a verb is the controlling element in most sentences, although it is more common in French than in English for a sentence to have no verb. Verbs are conjugated to reflect the following information:

a mood (indicative, imperative, subjunctive, conditional1, infinitive, participle, or gerundive2);

a tense (present, preterite3, imperfect3, future, or conditional1 though not all tenses can be combined with all moods);

an aspect (perfect2 or not);

a voice (active, passive2, or reflexive2).

In some of its uses, the conditional acts as a tense of the indicative mood; in other uses, including the use from which it takes its name, it acts as a distinct mood.

The gerundive mood, perfect aspect, and passive and reflexive voices are not synthetic; that is, they are expressed using multi-word verb forms.

The preterite and imperfect are sometimes called, somewhat redundantly, the preterite past and imperfect past. The preterite is also called the simple past, a translation of its French name (le passé simple).

Verbs in the finite moods (indicative, imperative, subjunctive, and conditional) are also conjugated to agree with their subjects in person (first, second, or third) and number (singular or plural), but as in English, the subject must be included excepted in the imperative mood. In other words, French is neither a null subject language nor a pro-drop language.

There are many others that have fallen out of use.

Answer 3

I'm not a native speaker, but there are 14 if you count the conditional and subjunctive. They are divided into 7 simple and 7 compound tenses: present, imperfect, simple past, future, conditional, and present and imperfect subjunctive. Each of these can be approximated in English to a greater or lesser degree.

English has variations that most other languages lack, for example the emphatic present (do or does with a verb) and the progressive past, present and future (was, is, will be swimming) and is one of many reasons why it's so hard for foreigners to learn.