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Estamos viendo la televisión porque está lloviendo.

Estamos viendo la televisión porque está lloviendo.
We are watching television because it is raining.
From Lesson 59:Present continuous (-ando, -iendo)·Spanish (Spain)

Questions & Answers about Estamos viendo la televisión porque está lloviendo.

How do you form the words viendo and lloviendo?
These are gerunds (the Spanish equivalent of English '-ing' words). To make them for verbs that end in -er, you drop the -er and add -iendo. So, ver (to watch/see) becomes viendo, and llover (to rain) becomes lloviendo.
Why does Estamos viendo mean 'we are watching' if there is no word for 'we' in the sentence?
The verb estar (to be) is conjugated here as estamos, which specifically means 'we are'. Because this verb form already tells us who is doing the action, the pronoun nosotros (we) is naturally dropped in Spanish.
Is there a Spanish word for 'it' in está lloviendo?
No, Spanish doesn't use a placeholder subject like 'it' for weather. Está is the 'he/she/it' form of the verb estar, and here it simply stands alone to mean 'it is'.
I learned that ver means 'to see'. Why does it mean 'watching' here?
In Spain, ver is the standard, natural verb used for watching television, a movie, or a game. While you might know mirar as 'to look at', native speakers almost always say ver la televisión rather than mirar la televisión.
Why is porque written as one word here?
When written as one word without an accent (porque), it means 'because'. If you split it into two words with an accent (por qué), it becomes the question word 'why'.

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