In English, the tenses are

• past perfect, indicating that action was completed in the past ("I had gone to the store")
  
• simple past, indicating that action was occurring in the past ("I went to the store"); or, in the subjunctive mood, suggesting unreality ("Were I you...")
  
• present perfect, indicating that action was recently completed ("I have gone to the store")
  
  
• simple present, indicating that action is occurring now ("I hate you"); or, in the subjunctive mood, suggesting greater possibility ("Be he alive or be he dead...")
  
  
• future perfect, indicating that action will be completed in the future ("I will have gone to the store")
  
  
• simple future, indicating that action will occur in the future ("You will be mine")
  
  

There's also a use of the simple present and present perfect to give past events a greater sense of immediacy; this use is called "the historical present". ("Then Booth shoots!")

The reason that the perfect tenses are called "perfect" is because the base meaning of "perfect" is complete (which is why the Preamble to the US Constitution refers to "a more perfect union"; it just means a more complete union).

Notice that English produces these perfect tenses.by using "have" as an auxiliary verb. Other languages may instead use distinct inflections, so that auxiliaries are not needed.

Other languages may have a different set of tenses, making it easier or
more difficult to be precise about the timing of actions.

CMIIW,

there're 13 tenses,
I've ever learned them >.<

@ jhoelsz
Thanks for helping me. Hehe. It should be my job tonpost this tenses actually, but haven' t got the right time.

@ boy
There are 16 tenses in total:
1. Present:
A. Simple Present
B. Present Cont
C. Present Perfect
D. Present Perfect Cont

2. Past
A. Simple Past
B. Past Cont
C. Past Perfect
D. Past Perfect Cont

3. Future
A. Simple Future
B. Future Cont
C. Future Perfect
D. Future Perfect Cont

4. Past Future
A. Past Future
B. Past Future Cont
C. Past Future Perfect
D. Past Future Perfect Cont

[quote="BoYBoYJC"]CMIIW,

there are 13 tenses,
I've ever learned them >.<[/quote

for total is about of 16 tenses
but that's just the modifying of the main six tenses above as what Tangerine said....