In English, the progressive tenses are used quite a lot. We say sentences such as: “I am eating.” Or “I am cooking.” However, in German such a tense does not exist. In German, we express what people are doing by using the present tense.
It’s pretty simple. The present tense is used to express many things in German. It can also be used to express something that you are going to do in the future. In English, we would say something like: “I am going to eat.” Or: “ I am going to cook.” In German, you would use the present tense for this situation also.
“Ich esse” (I will eat/I am eating)
“Ich koche” (I will cook/ I am cooking)
So how can we tell what someone means? The answer to that is context. However, there are other techniques you can use to indicate whether you are talking about what we’re doing currently or what we are going to do in the future. This can be done by using adverbs of time. You can use the word “tomorrow”, or the word “later.” This will signify that you are going to do something later. If you want to signify that you’re doing something now, you can use the adverb „gerade“ which means “just” or “currently” in the meaning of: “I am eating currently.”
We can use these if we think it won’t be clear, however you don’t have to. Most of time it’s obvious. If you’re friend tells you. “I fly to Berlin.” They probably don’t mean right now because they’re clearly standing right in front of you. If you’re on the phone, and they tell you in the beginning of he conversation that they’re at home, and then they say, “I fly to Berlin.” You can assume they are not talking about right now, but rather are talking about the future. It’s really all about the context. The present tense is probably the first tense you have learned, if you have learned this already, great! If you haven’t, you’re welcome! 🙂
Langflow 