Is there really no tenses in Indonesian Language ?

Once again, there's no hard tenses in Indonesian. But If i can say, speaking of truth, Indonesian do have some tenses. However, i don't know if these tenses can be considered as tenses because it doesn't change the form of the verb itself.

And here are some "Auxiliary Verbs" in Indonesia language to help determining the tense used in a sentence :

1. Sedang ( Present/ Past progressive tense ) *
2. Sudah/ Telah ( Present/ Past perfect tense ) *
3. Akan ( Simple future tense ) *
4. Akan sedang  ( Future progressive tense )
5. Akan sudah ( Future perfect tense )

*These are often used in daily conversation
In total, there are only 7 easy tenses to use in Indonesia Language

The only way to indicate the time of action is to add "Time Marker" ( yesterday = kemarin; now = sekarang; tomorrow = besok; just now, a short while ago = tadi ) in the sentence. The tenses are greatly explained by the context, in this case, Time Marked is really important to tell the time of the action.

For example :


Pak guru pergi

In English, above it can be interpreted as these options of tenses that can be used below :

-The teacher is leaving
-The teacher was leaving
-The teacher left
-The teacher leaves

That's why to make it even clearer, to prevent misunderstanding, we should add an adverb of time ( Time Marker ) and an Auxiliary Verb in a sentence.  

We can put the time marker anywhere in a Indonesian sentence but not after the Auxiliary Verb, in the beginning is ok, right before the Auxiliary Verb is alright ( preferable in Indonesian ), and After the object is also ok .

-Pak guru sekarang sedang membaca koran
( The teacher is now reading the newspaper )

-Pak guru kemarin sedang membaca koran or Kemarin, Pak guru sedang membaca koran
( Yesterday, The teacher was reading the newspaper )

-Pak guru tadi sudah membaca koran
( The teacher has read the newspaper a moment ago )

-Pak guru kemarin sudah/ telah membaca koran
( The teacher yesterday had read the newspaper )

-Pak guru besok akan membaca koran
( The teacher tomorrow will read the newspaper )

-Pak guru akan sedang membaca koran besok
( The teacher will be reading the newspaper tomorrow )

-Pak guru besok akan telah membaca koran
( The teacher tomorrow will have read the newpaper )

So, it's completely easy to talk with Indonesian because we don't have to think first about what tense should be used for our sentence before we want to express our thought. It doesn't need any changes on the verb at all.