Past, future, present

[taihu-dterraza]

I have been curious to learn how to say I would like to do _____ tomorrow. As in I would like to do it in the future. As well as how to say I did _____ yesterday. As though i was speaking in past tense. If anyone knows how to form sentences that differenciate future and past hit me up

[trevelyan]

我们明天告诉你。

[HashiriKata]

No, there's nothing such as tense marker in Chinese. In the right context, all types of sentences can look exactly the same.

Chinese, however, may mark some other kinds of differences that may mislead us non-Chinese to think of them as tense markers. Your English example sentences, for example, can be translated as the following:

我想明天买/去.

我昨天买了/去了.

As you seem to be a newcomer in Chinese, be prepared for this potential confusion. Chinese is best learned in context and with context.

[renzhe]

Yes, there are no tenses in the sense that European languages have them.

If you want to say you'll do something tomorrow/did it yesterday, you express it by saying "tomorrow" and "yesterday".

It's not as easy as that, as there are also aspect particles that describe how an action took place (which is slightly different), and using these properly is just as difficult as using tenses in Indo-European languages

[sophia7]

"there are no tenses in the sense that European languages have them." That's right!!

我去上课 can be used in the future and past. It means both "I went to class" and "I'm going to class." Depends on people ask you where you went, or where you will go.

[Mig]

I was wondering if I want to say, I will eat it later, let us say, I am already full and cannot finish my food so I will eat it later either shortly or later. How would you say it and how to explain that "will" which indicates the future will be understood in Chinese.
Thanks

[stapler]

我要晚一點再吃

 

Literally - I will later again eat

 

要 would be “will”

But it’s not common to use 要 like this because the sense of “will” is captured by using 再

 

[Mig]

Thank you stapler. Do you put more emphasis on wan3 and why again zai4? It seems that later is the key word to determine the future, would that be right?

[stapler]

I don’t put any special emphasis on any parts of the sentence that I’m aware of. 
 

The key word to determine the future is the wan3 yi4 dian3 (晚一點). To talk about future, or past, you need to explicitly mention the point in time then describe what happens at that point in time. 

So the first part of the sentence sets the time for when something has/will/might happen. In this case it will happen “later” wan3yi4dian4 (晚一點).

 

The second part of the sentence describes what happens at that time. In this case you will eat chi1 (吃).

 

So we now have the sentence wo3 wan3yi4dian3 chi1 (我晚一點吃). This means you will eat later on - literally “I later eat“.
 

In your question you said that you were eating, that you’re full, and want to eat more later. This is where you add zai4 (再) to add more description to chi1(吃)

zai4chi1 (再吃) means “continue to eat“

So in wo3 wan3yi4dian3 chi1 (我晚一點吃) - “I will eat later” - you can add more description about how you will chi1 (吃) by adding zai4(再) - “continue to eat”.

Which gets us back to the original complete sentence: wo3 wan3yi4dian3 (the time when you will do something) zai4 chi1 (continue eating - implying you’ve already eaten a bit)

 

Sorry if this is a bit repetitious, just trying to break it down as much as possible. The basic pattern in Chinese is generally [time of event] [action that happened at that time + modifiers to describe that action]
 

another example. wo3 (我 I) ming2tian1 (明天 tomorrow) zai4 (再 again/continue) kan4shu1 (看書 reading books) - I’ll continue reading books tomorrow. 

 

or another. wo3 (我 I) zuo2tian1 (昨天 yesterday) zhu3le5 (煮了 cooked) fan4 (飯 rice) - Yesterday I cooked some rice. 

 

This last example is different in two important ways. First is that the action takes place in the past (yesterday). So it would be illogical to use zai4 (再) here because you can’t continue an action in the past. Second, I didn’t just zhu3 (煮 cook) rice, I finished cooking it. In English we’d inflect they word “cook” to “cooked” to convey this sense of the cooking being done. But in Chinese we add le5 (了) - this is a more complicated topic best done covered elsewhere. But for now note the following pattern:

 

[person doing the action] - [time the action took place] - [the action that happened + modifiers to the action eg continue this action, complete this action, do this action in a hurry, etc]

[Mijin]

Also note that "了" is not quite the same thing as the past tense.
I have known some Chinese teachers to argue that it is, but in fact it's a completion particle, which often, but not always, refers to events in the past.

 

Consider the following exchange:

"老板，我感觉不舒服，要请一天假" (Boss, I don't feel well, I'd like to request a day off work)
"我知道了“ （I understand)

 

The "了“ here just means "Successfully understood". Whereas if it was past tense, we might translate it as "I knew", which would make no sense in this dialogue.

A more common example is simply "我走了" (I'm leaving), which people often say at the start of beginning to leave; so it's something like "I've successfully started the leaving process" 

 

--------------------------------------------------------

 

But in actually answering the OP, where the temporality of an event is obvious, you may not need to change the sentence at all from present tense.
The rest of the time, there are particles, usually attached to the verb that may indicate it has completed 过，完, 好 and 了 (although bear in mind the above note)。
There are a couple of adverbs like 要 and 会 that can indicate you're talking about the future. And as pointed out above there is also 又 and 再 which refer to a repeated action in the past or future respectively (e.g. 我昨晚又失眠 - Last night I again couldn't sleep)