tenses in cantonese

[Gar]

Hi

I wanted to ask how tenses are in cantonese, like past and future tense.
I know that in Cantonese there are multiple instances of past tense such as saying a little before/a while ago/ a long time ago, etc. What are they (written out in hanzi) and defined? What are the future tenses like? What about conditional tenses such as might/should/would/could?

Thanks so much. This will not only benefit me but others who are learning from everyone's input and help!

THank you!
-Garr

[Dylan Sung]

I'd like to refer you to my earlier reply here

http://www.chineselanguage.org/forum/re ... reply_1799

which I said that Chinese has no tenses, (in the same sense as western languages have tense, where a verb changes to indicate time). Time is indicated by the use of a time phrase somewhere within the sentence (for instance stated right at the beginning, as in

"tomorrow, I go home : ting yat, ngo fan uk-kei".

As mentioned in the above link, aspectual particles indicate the mood of a verb. Thus,

"tomorrow, whilst I am eating a meal... : ting yat ngo sik gan fan..."

where gan is the continuative aspect

I'll leave the Chinese characters for others to fill in.

Dyl.