Even if grammatically there’s only a small difference in aspect, in terms of meaning, there’s an entire world of difference between:

Are you drinking?

and

Do you drink?

As I’ve pondered on before, we actually don’t really use the verbs to eat or to drink very often, or at least not as often as how we each teach them would lead a learner to expect. To have tends to cover any situation where we could use either. But I was just thinking today how particularly loaded the word (to) drink can be, with its meaning changing a lot depending on the context or the tense we use. Have a look at these examples: Continue reading →