Compound Tenses
The easiest way to describe a COMPOUND TENSE is to contrast it with a SIMPLE tense.
A Compound tense has 2 portions for the verb.
For example: I am swimming. "Am swimming" is the verb "am" is a helping verb and both parts are essential.
Another example is: I have gone to the the beach. "have gone" is the full verb and "have" is the helping verb to "gone".
A simple tense is when you DON'T have the helping verb. It will look like this:
I ran to the store.
Mike swims alot.
Something that can be confusing is that a compound tense in ENGLISH doesn't need to be a compound tense in Spanish. For example. The future tense in English uses two parts "I will eat" or "He will swim". But in Spanish "will eat" would all be wrapped into 1 word "comeré" and so this would be considered a simple tense in Spanish.
Feel free to explore the submenus of "Compound and Simple tenses" on this website.
A Compound tense has 2 portions for the verb.
For example: I am swimming. "Am swimming" is the verb "am" is a helping verb and both parts are essential.
Another example is: I have gone to the the beach. "have gone" is the full verb and "have" is the helping verb to "gone".
A simple tense is when you DON'T have the helping verb. It will look like this:
I ran to the store.
Mike swims alot.
Something that can be confusing is that a compound tense in ENGLISH doesn't need to be a compound tense in Spanish. For example. The future tense in English uses two parts "I will eat" or "He will swim". But in Spanish "will eat" would all be wrapped into 1 word "comeré" and so this would be considered a simple tense in Spanish.
Feel free to explore the submenus of "Compound and Simple tenses" on this website.