Is it true that Chinese (Mandarin, Cantonese) has no future or past tense?

Question

I heard that, and it sounds very cool to me, and if true seems very profound. Thank you.

Answer 1

No, it is not true.

[edit]
To whoever gave me that thumbs down, you are very misinformed. I speak Cantonese, it is my family's native tongue. "I will go," "I went," and "I'm going" are DIFFERENT so it is NOT true. I know for sure because I have used Chinese conjugations to help my mother understand English conjugations.

Answer 2

First of all I am a guy from Hong Kong and I write in traditional chinese and speak in Cantonese, but I do know a bit Mandarin Matter fact, I do think simplified chinese is only a product of the communist party. The chinese leaders during the cultural revolution intruduced simplified chinese because they didnt want the nerds to know what traditional dialets talking about, and let the poor, uneduated villagers to read and write more easily... This is absurd... The chinese have been learning traditional chinese characters for 3000 years and this never ended. Only from traditional chinese could you understand the culture of China. And, interestingly, you will know simplied characters after studying the traditional ones, but not vice versa. by the way, Mandarin is one of the spoken languages in China, not written characters. There're 2 types of characters, namely traditonal and simplified chinese

Answer 3

You must also realize that English has no "future" tense either. These times are marked by the use of other words.

In English, we mark future time in several ways:
"I will go"
"I shall go"
"I am going to go"
"Tomorrow I go"

It is the same principle in Mandarin and Yue (Cantonese). They can still talk about future time, but they don't mark their verbs with a "tense" marker. This is actually quite common in the world's languages--past and present tenses are marked on the verb, but future time is marked with separate words. Mandarin, Yue, and the other "Chinese" languages also mark past in the same way that most languages mark future. They can easily talk about past times, but there is no past tense marker on the verb.

Answer 4

from the little i know of mandarin it is. i don't find it profound but it's easier when learning a language, the time aspect is just assumed or specified by saying a when. yesterday, before, later

Answer 5

Correct, in the conjugation of a verb there are not those tenses. They user other words (particles) to reflect different times.

So it's like "Tomorrow I see you" and things like that.