Am-progressive
The am-progressive is a type of progressive aspect in German grammar which uses the auxiliary verb sein ; instead of saying ich arbeite gerade to mean "I am working", some regional dialects use the construction ich bin am Arbeiten in order to emphasise the continuous nature of the action. The use of the am-progressive is considered very colloquial, and is proscribed in the education system.
The progressive with am is used most often in the Rhinelandic, West German, and Swiss dialects of German. Originally it was believed that the construction originated in West Germany, because of which it has also been called the Rhenish progressive, Ruhr progressive, and Westphalian progressive. However, these names may be misleading because the construction has been observed across West Germany, Switzerland, and beyond.
Occurrence
Across where it originated, the am-progressive is not only used by typical dialectal speakers but also in typical colloquial speech. Modified forms, for example ich bin grad einen Brief am Schreiben dran – "right now I'm writing a letter", are mainly found in the Ruhr dialect and less frequently in other places where the am-progressive is used. Over time the colloquial usage of the progressive tense has expanded across the German-speaking area.According to Duden the progressive is "somewhat viewed as standard speech already". Surveys by Flick/Kuhmichel and other linguists have even been able to prove that the construction is found in journalistic language as well. Despite expansion in colloquial use, and being generally considered acceptable and understandable in every day speech, the progressive is still considered ungrammatical in education and is proscribed alongside similar common colloquialisms such as ans and überm.
The use of the am-progressive across a Satzklammer, where the two verbs sandwich the rest of the sentence, is more firmly restricted to the areas where the construction was originally attested, the Rhineland and Westphalia, as well as in Switzerland. A sentence such as Ich kann nicht ans Telefon kommen, ich bin gerade den Rasenmäher am Reparieren – "I can't get the phone, I'm repairing the lawn mower" would be extremely unlikely in Saxony or Austria, but used commonly in Ruhr or Zürich. The Atlas ''zurdeutschen Alltagssprache therefore suggests that the spread of the am''-progressive is biphasic: the intransitive form spreads before the transitive form.
Construction
In German, the nominalised infinitive is the same as the verb, and is always neuter, so lachen would become am Lachen and weinen would become am Weinen; the word am comes from an + dem, and although this contraction only applies to masculine and neuter nouns, it always works in the progressive because the nominalised infinitives are always neuter. Sentences in the progressive form usually still use the word gerade, or its colloquial form grad, to mean 'right now', as well as the verb construction.In German, verbs are always lowercase and nouns are always uppercase, so am Lesen would suggest that the progressive is being constructed with a noun but am lesen would suggest the progressive is being constructed with a verb. Note that despite the verb sein always taking the nominative in German, and thus the object of the sentence logically being in the nominative case, the case in the progressive form is aligned with the case taken by the progressive verb, hence ich bin einen Brief am Schreiben and not ich bin ein Brief am Schreiben.
For verb phrases which contain a noun, the noun is contained within the am-progressive clause ; the construction with the object before the am is significantly rarer in all places and limited almost exclusively to North Rhine-Westphalia. In order to form the progressive in different tenses, the auxiliary sein is always affected and never the verb in the progressive form:
- He is writing a letter – er ist grad einen Brief am Schreiben
- He was writing a letter – er war grad einen Brief am Schreiben
- He has been writing a letter – er ist grad einen Brief am Schreiben gewesen
- He had been writing a letter – er war grad einen Brief am Schreiben gewesen
- He will be writing a letter – er wird grad einen Brief am Schreiben sein
- He will be writing a letter – er wird grad einen Brief am Schreiben gewesen sein
| Indicative | Ich schreibe einen Brief I write a letter |
| With grad | Ich schreibe grad einen Brief I'm writing a letter |
| With am | Ich bin einen Brief am Schreiben I'm writing a letter right now |
| With beim | Ich bin einen Brief beim Schreiben I'm writing a letter right now |
| With tun | Ich tue Briefe schreiben I do write letters.'' |
Similar progressive constructions
The Ripuarian language and some Low Franconian languages make use of a further progressive form constructed using tun, in the same way as English emphasis. In the Colognian dialect, for example, you can say Dä deijt do wunne to mean that it is certain and permanent that someone is living there. In contrast, Dä eß do am Wunne could mean that someone is living there temporarily, such as if they were on holiday. The construction with tun has started being used in more standard forms of colloquial German, but is much rarer and more dialectal than the construction using sein.In Austria, the published standard instead uses the word beim, but a growing proportion of speakers use am instead. Some people consider beim to be a less formal construction of the progressive than am, and Bastian Sick reported in 2005 that beim was more common as an informal progressive. He also describes beim as inappropriate for some verbs, such as lieben , but that am can be used colloquially with those verbs.
A similar progressive construction can be found in Dutch using aan het + Verb and is generally acceptable there. Duplicate forms of am also exist in the Eschweiler dialect, which is a Ripuarian dialect.
Spelling controversy
The question of how to spell the verb component in the progressive is currently still in dispute, primarily whether it should be ich bin am Arbeiten or ich bin am arbeiten. Duden argued in its 2009 edition that the word is casually used as a verb, not a noun. As of 2023, the entry on the word am in the online edition of Duden describes the am-progressive as colloquial, and suggests, in contrast to its earlier print edition, that it should be used with capitalised verb forms. The German-language expert Gabriella Gárgyán argued in her 2010 dissertation that so-called progressive verbs were a new verb class, because the verb has a distinct function to an infinitive and therefore she makes the case for it being spelled lowercase.Alternatively it is sometimes viewed that am is a fourth verb state alongside the infinitive, zu-infinitive, and past participle, and that the is only to be used with sein. Evidence from the internet has also shown that the lowercase spelling is also generally acceptable.