Learn Spanish (Spain): Estamos pintando la pared.

Estamos pintando la pared.

We are painting the wall.

Breakdown of Estamos pintando la pared.

estar

to be (location/state)

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Questions & Answers about Estamos pintando la pared.

How do we form the "-ing" word pintando?

Pintando comes from the verb pintar (to paint). To talk about an action happening right now, you drop the -ar ending and add -ando. This is just like adding "-ing" in English!

Why does this sentence use estamos instead of somos? Both mean "we are"!

In Spanish, when you want to say you are doing something right now (the present continuous), you always use the verb estar. You never use ser for this, even though both verbs mean "to be".

Where is the word for "we" in this sentence?

You don't actually need to say the word for "we" (nosotros or nosotras) here. The verb estamos already specifically means "we are", so Spanish speakers usually drop the pronoun to sound more natural.

I thought feminine words usually ended in "-a". Why is it la pared?

It's true that most feminine words end in "-a", but Spanish has a few other endings that are usually feminine too. Nouns that end in "-d", like la pared (the wall) or la ciudad (the city), are almost always feminine.