What languages do not use present progressive?

Stephen Jones · Post by **Stephen Jones** » Fri Apr 13, 2007 11:13 pm

Yea Juan, choice of aspect, and even of tense, depends more on the speakers subjective attitude to the events than on any objective criteria.

Older people's habits will be more fixed than those of younger people, and so they are more likely to use the simple than the progressive when talking about their habits, but I see no evidence that there has been a change in the last fifty years or so.

Present Simple for 'habitual actions' is a concept taken from EFL grammars; I doubt if it has any real existence in the mind of native speakers of whatever age or background.

When mummy's offspring leaves home for the first time, the parent's most common question is much more likely to be "Are you eating properly?" than "Do you eat properly."

JuanTwoThree · Post by **JuanTwoThree** » Sat Apr 14, 2007 5:41 am

The "change" you refer to is in the world and the lives we lead, not in the grammar.

In the past many people could have said "I work for Ford, I live in Dagenham, I drive a Cortina"

Nowadays people may say "I'm working for Ford, I'm living in Dagenham, I'm driving a Mondeo".

However the Cortina driver's soldier brother might have said "I'm living in Cyprus/Aden/Hong Kong/ Kenya" and whole villages now would like to be able to say "We work for The National Coal Board".

Same grammar, different world.

Stephen Jones · Post by **Stephen Jones** » Sat Apr 14, 2007 9:31 am

Well we could discuss the sociology; in fact the stability you refer to was somewhat of a myth, as the 50s were unusual, but people certainly believed it then.

I think we both can agree that there has not been a significant generational change in the use of the progressive, and that it certainly hasn't been because of an earlier belief the simple is 'proper grammar'.

JuanTwoThree · Post by **JuanTwoThree** » Sat Apr 14, 2007 11:08 am

Agreed. I just think it might be around a bit more.

lolwhites · Post by **lolwhites** » Mon Apr 16, 2007 8:38 am

lucy lace wrote: My Asian students definitely want a Standard English rule - a hard, fast, no-exceptions-please kind of rule.

All students want nice, easy black and white rules, but they will never become proficient until they realise that language simply doesn't work that way. Part of the teachers job, IMO, is to help them along that road.

When I taught in the UK, my advanced classes were full of students who said "But my teacher back home said..."