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We in Serbian don´t even have present simple. We have one present for a both tense.
Just like in Polish - perhaps because both are Slavic language.
For curious: in Polish, "Water boils at 100 degrees Celsius" looks the same as "Water is boiling at 100 degrees Celsius", that is:
"Woda wrze w 100 stopniach Celsjusza"
Whether this sentence conveys a general rule / physic law, or current state of, say, a cup of water, depends on context (I guess that at least in 90% of cases this sentence would mean the general rule). To make it less ambiguous, we can add words which stress that we are talking about current state of some thing - for example "właśnie" (just / right now), "w tej chwili" (at the moment); we can also make it clear that we´re not talking about water in general, but, like above, about "this water" or "this cup of water":
"Woda właśnie wrze w 100 stopniach Celsjusza" ("The water is boiling right now at 100 degrees Celsius" <- notice that there is no corresponding word for "the" in Polish)
"Woda w tym garnku właśnie wrze w 100 stopniach Celsjusza" ("Water in this pot is boiling right now at 100 degrees Celsius")
At least, I can´t think of any other way to make this sentence look more like "present continuous sentence".
Edited (12/29/2012) by tomac
Edited (12/29/2012) by tomac
Edited (12/29/2012) by tomac
Edited (12/29/2012) by tomac
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