Present Progressive Vs Present Indicative

[Donquick]

Hello,

I am learning Spanish due to the fact that I now live in Spain, but I am only a beginner. I have a question about the present tense. In English I use the present progressive almost at the exclusion of the present indicative. I can never imagine saying 'I eat a bowl of soup' or 'He walks to the post box' to describe what I am doing at the moment. I would absolutely always say 'I am eating a bowl of soup' or 'He is walking to the post box'. I think this is true generally for all English speakers.

This said, whenever we learn a new language, we are all taught the present indicative and don't really even get introduced to the progressive until quite an advanced level. I have been learning Spanish quite intensively for a little while now and it is all 'como' this and 'caminas' that, etc. not an 'estoy or an '-ando' to be seen. Further more the books and the websites translate the present indicative as both 'I suchandsuch' and 'I am suchandsuching'.

So the question is this. Do the Spanish (and indeed the French, as the same was true when I was taught that at school) actually use the present indicative for the present or is it just taught as a stepping stone to the progressive which is in fact what is used in real life? My observation while listening to Spanish, on the rare occasion that I can understand anything, is that there are indicatives around, but I usually can't catch enough to work out precisely what is being said.

Anyway, there it is, it would be great to hear from anyone who knows the answer. I am getting to the stage that I want to start speaking to people in Spanish and this seems to be a critical area of understanding to make oneself sound reasonably proficient.

Thanks,

[wrholt]

Spanish does have a complete set of progressive verb forms built from "estar + X-ndo", which directly parallels English "be X-ing".

And your observations are spot on: most of the time the Spanish simple present is a perfectly adequate equivalent for English present progressive.

There are a few contexts where Spanish prefers the simple present; you'll learn more about that as you progress in learning Spanish.

As a beginner's rule of thumb, you can consider using present progressive whenever you are talking about something that is actively in progress right now AND you want to focus on the fact that it's actively in progress. But even then the simple present may be adequate.

The verb 'ir' = "to go" is so rarely used in progressive forms that many grammar books say that it is never used in progressive forms.

[Donquick]

Thank you very much, that is a great help!