I would say "tense" or "subjunctive" refers to verb forms , each of which may have more than one function. What we call the past form wrote or was/were may or may not have the function of referring to past time. Tense and time are not the same, one is a linguistic category, the other is a fact of the world (possibly, but I'm not going to open that can of worms here).

There are some remnants of a subjunctive in English -- recognisable in the present because there is no s on the third person singular or do with the negative ( I suggest Alex consult a lawyer as soon as possible. The doctor suggested the patient not be disturbed.) and only recognisable in the past tense where it is used for contra-factual conditions with the verb to be ( If I were you ).

William, go with your instincts. It's time I were going sounds wrong because it is wrong. It's wrong because it's not a subjunctive. Maybe in Latin it would have to be a subjunctive (I can't remember) but that's irrelevant.

will is a modal verb like must, may, might, can, could, shall, should . It is usually but not always used to talk about the future, and is not the only way of talking about the future, so why call it a future tense?

Latin is an excellent language, but it is not English, and its linguistic rules and categories do not apply to English. English does not inflect nouns in the same way as Latin does, so it has no dative or ablative. Similarly English verbs work in different ways from Latin ones.


Bingley

Bingley