In today’s lesson we will answer the question: “How do you say ING in French?”. There are actaully many ways to do this. I tried to keep the grammatical explanations to a minimum and suggest to focus more on the example sentences.
Example sentences
In French, the present tense (le présent) equates to both simple present tense (e.g., I learn) and present continuous tense (e.g., I am learning). Hence, for this first sentence, j’apprends translates to “I am learning”. You cannot use être (to be) and say “je suis apprends” to mean “I’m learning”. That is a common mistake made by many beginners.
J’apprends le français en France.
I’m learning French in France.
This same concept applies to the the second example sentence. “Qu’est-ce que tu fais” translates to both “What do you do?” and “What are you doing?”.
Qu’est-ce que tu fais demain.
What are you doing tomorrow?
Another commonly used form used to express an action which is occurring is: Present tense of être (to be) + en train de + infinitive. This form is used to express “in the middle of” or “happening now”.
Je suis en train de manger la pizza.
I am eating the pizza.
You can also use the gerund to express -ing. The gerund is formed by taking the nous form of the verb in the present tense, omitting the -ons and replacing it with -ant, then preceding it by the preposition en. Hence, en apprenant means “while learning”.
En apprenant la liste de verbes, j’ai compris que le français est très compliqué.
While learning the list of verbs, I understood that French is very complicated.
Another way to express -ing is to use the imperfect tense to mean “was verb + -ing”. Hence, je travaillais in this example means “I was working”. This page on our site covers the imperfect tense (l’imparfait) in detail.
Je n’y suis pas allé hier parce que je travaillais.
I didn’t go yesterday because I was working.
Related lessons
French grammar | Lessons by David Issokson
