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by thaumasiotes 791 days ago
> There's no tense, no verb ending, no conjugation, zero of any of that stuff in Chinese...

This is plainly untrue. Speaking for Mandarin:

1. It's necessary to track tense in negative-polarity sentences because past-tense verbs are negated differently from present-tense ones. Technically this is accomplished by using an auxiliary verb, though in many cases that verb doesn't actually appear in the sentence where you're using it.

2. There are three aspectual verb endings, 了 (perfect), 着 (continuous), and 过 (experiential).

3. Verbs are inflected for possibility and impossibility, so that 动 is "move" and 动不了 is "cannot move".

> I finished the Chinese grammar in less than a week lol

Right.