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The Present Progressive Tense in English | ||
Tags: Verbs/Conjugation | English | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Philological Room |  | |
| rapp Senior Member United States Joined 5735 days ago 129 posts - 204 votes  Speaks: English* Studies: Esperanto, Spanish | Message 9 of 18 25 February 2010 at 7:01pm | IP Logged | |||||
"Ask not what your country can do for you..." It might not be used colloquially, but it can be quite memorable in the correct circumstance. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| SteveB Newbie United Kingdom Joined 5948 days ago 14 posts - 15 votes Studies: Portuguese | Message 10 of 18 25 February 2010 at 7:13pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Oh!
I wrote my last post without reading all the subsequent posts, which also answered my question. Thanks everyone. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| reltuk Groupie United States Joined 6820 days ago 75 posts - 110 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish, French | Message 11 of 18 25 February 2010 at 7:26pm | IP Logged | |||||
Good example! Who knows...this could be the exact influence which caused me to follow up by saying with transitive verbs in an attempt to generate stark contrast, it seems less weird. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Cainntear Pentaglot Senior Member Scotland linguafrankly.blogsp Joined 6015 days ago 4399 posts - 7687 votes Speaks: Lowland Scots, English*, French, Spanish, Scottish Gaelic Studies: Catalan, Italian, German, Irish, Welsh | Message 12 of 18 25 February 2010 at 10:56pm | IP Logged | |||||
The word-for-word translation would be "Am I in going", not "I do go". However, the Welsh for "am" is actually "dw", and a Welsh W is pronounced OO so Welsh "am" sounds like English "do". (Modern Welsh uses the present progressive form (=I am doing) for both progressive and habitual present, whereas Irish has distinct present progressive and habitual present tenses and Scottish Gaelic has a progressive present only, with present habitual realised by the future tense.) Edited by Cainntear on 25 February 2010 at 10:56pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Johntm Senior Member United StatesRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5426 days ago 616 posts - 725 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish | Message 13 of 18 26 February 2010 at 5:33am | IP Logged | |||||
The lack of "do" sometimes throws me off in Spanish. While doing Pimsleur I'm asked to translate something, and I try to remember how to say "do" before I remember that there isn't a word for it. Now that I think about it, it is a pretty useless word... 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Aquila123 Tetraglot Senior Member Norway mydeltapi.com Joined 5310 days ago 201 posts - 262 votes Speaks: Norwegian*, English, Italian, Spanish Studies: Finnish, Russian | Message 14 of 18 07 June 2010 at 9:08pm | IP Logged | |||||
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This kind of construction is not rare at all, you can find it spread around all over the world.
I once read that it originally was a prepositional phrase with a verbal noun, something like: He is in/on eating a chicken. Then the preposition disappeared and the verbal noun got reinterpreted as an active participle that even took the place of the original active participle. The scandinavian languages still have both the verbal noun in "-ing", and the original active participle in "-ende.", but do not use yhem in these ways, except in some marginal cases. But the very conservative Icelandic have the same construction like the modern English one. Finnish have this original kind of construction with a verbal noun, and with a case ending in the same role as the preposition. Olen syömässä = I am in eating = I am eating. The romance languages have the same kind of construction as the modern English one: Italian: Sto mangiando = I am eating. In Norwegian you often make a progressive/imperfective construction by combining a verb with an intransitive intrisically imperfective verb. Jeg sitter og spiser = I sit and eat = I am sitting eating Edited by Aquila123 on 07 June 2010 at 9:15pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Levi Pentaglot Senior Member United States Joined 5571 days ago 2268 posts - 3328 votes Speaks: English*, French, Esperanto, German, Spanish Studies: Russian, Dutch, Portuguese, Mandarin, Japanese, Italian | Message 15 of 18 13 June 2010 at 8:01am | IP Logged | |||||
French doesn't. Nobody would say "je suis mangeant". 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Sprachprofi Nonaglot Senior Member Germany learnlangs.comRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6474 days ago 2608 posts - 4866 votes Speaks: German*, English, French, Esperanto, Greek, Mandarin, Latin, Dutch, Italian Studies: Spanish, Arabic (Written), Swahili, Indonesian, Japanese, Modern Hebrew, Portuguese | Message 16 of 18 13 June 2010 at 8:32am | IP Logged | |||||
Yes. It would have to be "je suis en train de manger". Also, "sto mangiando" is not nearly as common as "I am eating", nor is it the only correct way of expressing the current action. Edited by Sprachprofi on 13 June 2010 at 8:33am 1 person has voted this message useful |
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