正在
zhèng zài
In real, traceable use. Part of the curated seed collection; community review is coming.
Marks an action as going on right now, like English 'is doing'. It goes before the verb: 妈妈正在做饭 'Mum is cooking'. A final 呢 often goes with it; the shorter 在 works too, while 正在 puts more weight on 'at this very moment'.
Đang: chỉ hành động đang diễn ra ngay lúc này. Đặt trước động từ, giống “đang” trong tiếng Việt: 妈妈正在做饭 (mẹ đang nấu cơm). Cuối câu hay có thêm 呢; chỉ dùng 在 cũng được, nhưng 正在 nhấn mạnh “ngay lúc này” hơn.
AdverbRegister: neutral
Examples
Editorial example (illustrative, not a corpus attestation) — awaiting a native-speaker check
Sources & notes
Hán-Việt bridge batch 064 (2026-11-14). Headword, Traditional form and pinyin checked against CC-CEDICT (CC BY-SA 4.0) source ↗ · Hán-Việt reading: Unihan kVietnamese source ↗ · No Vietnamese entry is linked as its twin; the Hán-Việt reading is given character by character. Definition, literal gloss and example sentence are original; the example has not had a native-speaker check yet.
Common questions
What does “正在” mean?
Marks an action as going on right now, like English 'is doing'. It goes before the verb: 妈妈正在做饭 'Mum is cooking'. A final 呢 often goes with it; the shorter 在 works too, while 正在 puts more weight on 'at this very moment'. Literally: right at
Is “正在” formal or informal?
正在 is generally neutral.