"I am eating."

Translation: Ich esse.

[Linuxist]

Can I write it like this "Ich bin isst" instead

[christian]

No. German doesn't have a continuous aspect. Both "I eat" and "I am eating" translate as "Ich esse".

[camieman10]

So bin(am) is only used in its literal context of "to be"?

[Bukkowsky]

What about "Ich esse gerade"? If I want to stress that I'm referring to present continuous wouldn't it be better than just "Ich esse"?

[aloe.cc]

Absolutely right.

[basilkar]

I believe you can also say "ich bin am Essen" or even "ich bin beim Essen" (the infinitive used as a noun) to convey a present continuous meaning, but this might not be "hochdeutsch" use -- I'm not sure (people do say it all the time though).

[Koco1223]

I thought it was Isst? Or does Isst mean eat?

[Boxeye]

I eat = Ich esse.
She/he eats = Sie/er isst.

The word for "eat" changes in both English and German. :)

[prmichaelsen]

The german verb is "essen", conjugated "esse" for the pronoun "ich"

[Awheezi]

Does German follow the same grammar structure as English in a Subject-Verb agreement form? Meaning, if one has a singular subject(noun) then you need a plural verb, right? That why, it is Icch esse, and not Ich isst. Just mentioning the way I view it.

[christian]

It's not that simple. When it comes to subject-verb agreement and pronouns, German is more complex than English.

http://goo.gl/4F4lM

[NickDanger3]

" if one has a singular subject(noun) then you need a plural verb"
No, for a singular subject the verb needs to be in the singular as well, in English and in German.

[FreidaVale]

Why is it that if it's "i" there is an 'e' added to both esse and trinke and not if it's speaking of someone else?

[ebrobinson]

Why in English is the verb "To be"
I am
You are
The answer is, it just is.
German verbs just seem to do this almost all the time, as far as I understand.
On the upside the patterns are much more predictable than English, eg:
It's pretty common to have "e" at then end of verbs with "I".
eg: Ich
Spreche
Esse
Trinke
Mache
Lese

Then you can consistently add "n" to get the form for "We", eg:
Wir
Sprechen
Essen
Trinken
Machen
Lesen

[RockinAbs]

Can you not just say 'esse' meaning "I drink"? The "Ich" is necessary?

[christian]

You can't drop it.

[Luisfcaraujo]

Is there a rule for these differences? Like:
Ich esse
du/er/sie/es isst
ihr esst
Sie/sie essen

Is there a logic structure on these differences? Like, if I know that in this case it is like this, I can't use the same rule to another verb?

[christian]

http://www.dartmouth.edu/~german/Grammatik/PresentTense/Present.html