I’ve been allowed to study English at University this year. My spoken and written English has been decent but having the chance to dive deep into the fundamentals of grammar and literature has given me a massive boost. What a beautiful and complex language!
I didn’t know that English does not have a designated future tense. You are simply recycling other tenses and you have to analyze and interpret context to right and speak properly. It’s fascinating and brilliant. My only regret is that regardless of how much I work, I will always have an accent. I dream of having a perfect accent, regardless of which!
Yes, modern English is a mongrel language - pretty much a creole, and became like this to facilitate communication between disparate linguistic groups sharing a small space. Thus it has lost almost all of its flexion, to the point where it is almost a series of particles which context and word order temporarily designate into various 'parts of speech' and, as you say, the future and conditional tenses. It also almost totally lacks a subjunctive. In that regard it has more in common with, for example, Mandarin Chinese than it does ts closest neighbours, which are also its antecedents.
This weirdness soup is part of what makes it such a successful language, and also pretty easy to learn to speak (its confusing orthography makes reading and writing somewhat harder)
I wouldn't worry about accent; it's always the thing language learners care most about and yet is least important. And it's almost impossible to lose anyway so trying is a wasted effort. Even with the most rigorous feedback-based practice and training most people past about the age of 5 can only hope to master about 85% of a foreign language's sound systems perfectly (there are some rare exceptions). It's really not worth it.
And accented English sounds cool
