28 - Progressive tense, present participle, gerund/Le temps progressif, le participe présent, le gérondif

Summary

It is necessary to treat these three structures together since they can easily be confused. They all express an activity in progress, an act or thought in the process of being realized. The progressive tense is the simplest one to deal with in the sense that it does not exist in modern French. However, it does attract at least one observation. Whereas all Romance languages, and English for that matter, rely quite heavily on the progressive tense, with its attendant nuances, its absence in modern French must be conceived as a radical deficiency. The French language fails to deal adequately with the English He is reading, which has its Italian and Spanish equivalents (Italian: Sta leggendo; Spanish: Está leyendo), and has recourse to a cumbersome but common Il est en train de lire, or the lame Il lit. Similarly, French cannot truly accommodate the past progressive tense He was reading (Italian: Stava leggendo; Spanish: Estaba/Estuvo leyendo), except with the help of en train de: Il était en train de lire. It may be legitimately argued that the French imperfect does perform this function moderately well (Il lisait), but this tense does not suggest the vigor and nuance apparent in the other languages referred to. Finally, a future progressive is inaccessible to French: He will be reading (Italian: Starà leggendo; Spanish: Estará leyendo).