Spanish present progressive
El presente progresivo
For actions that are currently happening, in English we use to be + verb-ing (it is raining, Juan is eating, I am writing a book...).
In Spanish, we always use estar for progressive tenses, followed by the gerundio, our equivalent of the English -ing form, which is built by adding:
-ando to the root of -ar verbs
Yo estoy cantando. Juan está llamando a su madre.
-iendo to the root of -er and -ir verbs
Nosotros estamos bebiendo agua. Usted está escribiendo.
This tense is commonly used with the adverbs ahora (now) and hoy (today).
It's raining, it's snowing
llover - to rain
nevar - to snow
When we want to say it's raining or snowing, we have to use the progressive tense in the third person singular, since llover and nevar are impersonal verbs:
está lloviendo - it's raining
está nevando - it's snowing
When we conjugate them in the present tense (for habits or facts), we need to keep in mind that nevar and llover are stem-changing verbs. But since nevar and llover are also impersonal verbs, we only conjugate them in the third person singular:
llueve - it rains
nieva - it snows
En Arizona nunca nieva.
En Seattle llueve casi cada día.
Conversación
Victor: Hola, Pamela, ¿qué estás haciendo?
Pamela: Hola, Victor. Estoy mirando la televisión y respondiendo emails de mis amigas. También estoy cocinando una sopa (soup) de pollo. Hoy hace mucho frío, ¿no?
V: Sí, un poco, está nevando.
P: Sí. Me gusta el invierno. ¿Qué estás haciendo?
V: Estoy escribiendo un artículo y lavando mi ropa. Mi perro está comiendo.
P: Muy bien.
Rereading feels productive but fades fast. What actually works is closing the page and trying to recall what you just learned. The effort of reconstructing knowledge from memory is what makes it stick.
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