How many tenses are there in English language?

«What does the above sentence mean?»

I was in a hurry so it got mixed in my head:

«I even don't know whether I should treat your remark as ironical or not»

Jackson6612:

«Why would you treat my remark as an ironical one?»

If you take just a brief look at the linked discussions you'll understand.

The "bad" guy, engtense, took me seriously but kept resorting to sophistic arguments and various logical mistakes for which even exist special latin terms...

To make wrong argumentation and wordplay over my posts more difficult I was explaining things more and more formal, more and more mathematically. Not only didn't that help but other forum haunters (very good at English) found the discussian really terrible and dumb. They agreed with my results but found my way of achieving them too complicated and unnatural, while all I was doing is point to my opponents logical errors as accurately as possible.

So, engtense — the only guy who commented on my explanation of tenses — wasn't an opponents one would like to conversate with, and I just remembered his feeedback.

Not sure it'll be considered polite, but I'll post my explanation in this thread, even if it'll be one week old, so that you receive an email notification.

how many tenses are there in english language

CalifJim

Strictly speaking there are only two tenses, but the idea of tense is usually extended to include aspect and voice.
Tenses:  Present, Past.
Aspects:  Simple, Perfect, Progressive, Perfect Progressive
Voices:  Active, Passive
Each tense can be expressed in all four aspect possibilities, so there are 8 tenses, not considering voice.  Each of these 8 can be expressed in two voices, so the total number of tenses (so far) is 16.

Perfect progressive aspect is normally not expressed in the passive voice.