simple/progressive

[navi tasan]

What is the difference between:
1-I am staying in the office today.
2-I stay in the office today.

(I get the feeling that in 2, the person might have received an order or may be acting according to a strict plan he has set himself. Is that correct?)

 

[dduck]

As I wrote in reply to another comment, the present simple is used to describe habits, or recurring actions. Example 2 is a little strange because "I stay in the office" implies a habit, that is, I do this everyday, for example. However, "Today" implies that it's not a habit. Together, the sentence doesn't sound correct.

Iain

 

[RonBee]

What is the difference between:
1-I am staying in the office today.
2-I stay in the office today.

They probably mean the same thing, except the second doesn't seem like idiomatic English.

• A: What are you doing today?
  B: I am staying in the office today.

Can you supply a context for sentence two?

 

[Tdol]

'I stay in the office today' sounds a bit Me-Tarzan-you-Jane. In fact, I think that, without some context, it would be classified as an error. I cannot think of such a context offhand either. ;-)

 

[navi tasan]

Thanks for all your replies. This simple/progressive thing is a big problem for me because aspects do not work in the same way in my language.
I generally use the progressive in contexts like this one but sometimes I might end up speaking like Tarzan, or TA(r)SAN.

Navi Tasan

 

[Tdol]

Stick to the progressive and no one will suspect you of being Lord Greystoke. ;-)