The Spanish present tense has a continuous (progressive) form to express an action which is ongoing in the present. It works in a similar way to the English present continuous:
To express a continuing or ongoing present action in Spanish you will follow this pattern for most regular verbs:
First of all you will need estar in El Presente:
yo | estoy |
tú | estás |
él / ella / Ud. | está |
nosotros/nosotras |
estamos |
vosotros /vosotras |
estáis |
ellos / ellas / Uds. | están |
And then:
Estar in El Presente + |
-ando (-AR verbs) |
-iendo (-ER and -IR verbs) |
To form the gerund of the main action verb (which finishes in -ando/-iendo = the equivalent of the -ing form in English) you need to drop the ending of the infinitive and add the suffix -ando/-iendo):
hablar → habl- = hablando
correr → corr- = corriendo
For regular gerunds see:
For irregular gerunds see:
- Verb list: Irregular gerunds of the form -iendo
- Verb list: Irregular gerunds of the form -yendo
- Forming irregular gerunds (-ing form)
See also Forming El Imperfecto Progresivo with estar + gerund (imperfect progressive).
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