Ek leer Afrikaans | Part 2: Continuous Tense?

Added: 2026-06-01

[00:00:00]A lear Africans.

[00:00:03]In the previous video in this series, I introduced the sentence that I'll be using to explain all the Africans tenses and modal verbs in upcoming videos. In English, it translates to I learn Africans or I am learning Africans.

[00:00:27]But wait, how can it be both? Shouldn't there be another way of saying I am learning in Africans?

[00:00:39]In Africans, we don't have the continuous tense. The tense that English uses to indicate that something is currently busy happening.

[00:00:53]We only have the simple present.

[00:01:01]We say this assuming that whoever is listening can figure out from the context whether it is currently happening or just a general statement.

[00:01:14]So, if I'm literally sitting at my desk studying Africans or perhaps watching this video and someone asks me what I'm doing, I will simply answer a aricorn and they should be able to tell that I am indeed currently busy learning Africans.

[00:01:39]If perhaps I get a message on my phone asking the same question, I can still just answer with a but if I absolutely want to make sure that they understand that the learning is currently in process, I could say a is a which uses the adverb which means busy and the infinitive to create a sort of alternative to the English continuous tense. But I don't have to do this. I can really just