Do Spanish native speakers use all the tenses in Spanish?

I have been taking Spanish for 4 years, and I just realized that we have learned more than 16 tenses in Spanish already.
Here they are:
Present Indicative
Command (both tu affirmative and the rest)
Preterit
Imperfect
Future Indicative
Conditional
Present Progressive
Past Progressive
Present Subjunctive
Past Subjunctive
Present Perfect
Past Perfect
Conditional Perfect
Future Perfect
Present Perfect Subjunctive (haya + ado/ido)
Past Perfect Subjunctive (hubiera + ado/ido)

Seriously? People always say that Spanish is the easiest language to learn for the native English speakers. I sincerely doubt that. The beginning level of Spanish is pretty easy and straightforward, but it gets nasty.
So my question is, do people actually use all the tenses correctly in the daily life? How can their brain process so fast. I mean, when I was learning present perfect subjunctive, I have to determine 1.) the tense, 2.) subjunctive or not, and 3.) the event occurs before or after the primary verb. 4.) the correct conjugation.
I was an English second language learner as well, but English doesn't have these kinds of bizarre grammatical rules. There are some irregulars in English, but there are MORE in Spanish. English does have different types of command; English does not have to be conjugated beside adding -ed and -ing; English doesn't have subjunctive tenses; English allows both past and present tenses to exist in one sentence; English perfect tenses are so much simpler (have + -ed). So my question is, how do the native Spanish speakers speak so fluently without pausing? Do they actually use the correct tenses every time they speak? I mean, how would their brain process so fast and know which tense to use at the instantaneous moment?

Carlitos2013-05-14T02:08:15Z

Favorite Answer

Yes. we use them in a daily manner. If you get something written in Spanish, you will find all the tenses used. And don't be surprised if you find more than ten different tenses in a short paragraph. This is the reason why Spanish grammar is maybe one of the most difficult than exist, and it is also the reason why learning Spanish is so hard for no Spanish speakers.

We can do it because of brain plasticity. If someone begins to learn a skill in early age, no matter how difficult that skill can be, the brain organizational systems develop in complexity according to the skill requeriments. So, millions of new brain conections are formed and work as functional systems to process the information needed.

Yes, Spanish grammar is bizarre. But such a caractheristic explains why Spanish is more beautiful than English and why English is more practical than Spanish. As you can see, there are advanteges and troubles in every case.

Nice to answer.

A Costa Rican native and Spanish speaker. Improving my English in advanced courses.

Anonymous2016-12-25T01:47:27Z

1

Laurence2013-05-13T23:04:05Z

No, I have yet to meet the future subjunctive outside literary texts of the 18th century and earlier and doubt that more than a very few very well educated Spanish speakers could even tell you its forms (it is not even on your list!). This is one of its differences from Poruguese, where the future subjunctive is still in normal everyday use. The historic pluperfect has replaced the past subjunctive in most of Spain and all of the Americas. I don't recall meeting the plural of the imperative outside Spain.
But suggesting that English is somehow "easier" than Spanish? Can you be serious? How many foreigners have you met capable of knowing, e.g., when to use the present simple versus the present continous in English, use the proper tense after "since" or comply with the sequence of tenses: matters that the native speaker has mastered before he or she turns five?

cura2016-11-11T02:24:40Z

Future Indicative Spanish

Don Verto2013-05-14T06:52:36Z

Yes Spanish is very complex.I am sure that after learning Spanish most of my life I will never be good enough.Maybe compared to many other languages Spanish is easier to learn for an English speaker. I have met many Spanish speakers that could not even read or write.I am quite sure they did not use all the proper grammar either.Yes people speak very fast in Spanish because of breath groups and dropped letters and other parts of words.Yes Spanish is written phonetically but that may be true for a single spoken word but it is not so with fast spoken sentences.

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