Tense -- a change in the form of a verb to show, among other things, time reference. Therefore English has two tenses, past and present.

Aspect -- speaker's/hearer's viewpoint with regard to the action of a verb. English has simple, progressive (aka continuous), perfect, and perfect progressive (aka perfect continous) aspects. The aspects combine with tenses to make e.g. present perfect continous.

NB. These are linguistic features, not part of the real world. Thus, what we call past tense for convenience's sake does not have to relate to past time, e.g. It's time we were going. , refers to present time rather than past time despite the past tense form were

Voice -- active v. passive

Mood -- indicative v. imperative v. interrogative

As the question of how many tenses ran and ran in the magazine "English Today" I don't expect everyone will agree with the above.

PS I remember once seeing a cartoon of a couple in a travel agent's saying "Somewhere with no irregular verbs please."

Bingley


Bingley