Use of 在 in 他们在吃饭

[ChinaChina]

Hi, this is my first day starting to learn and I just wanted to clarify the meaning of the following passage.

Ta- men zai\ chi- fan\

Which means "They are eating'

Thanks for the help

[Hofmann]

OK. 他們在吃飯.

Morpheme breakdown:

他 third person pronoun

們 pronoun pluralizer

在 continuous aspect particle

吃 eat

飯 rice (used in 吃飯 as food in general)

他們 forms "they"

在 makes the following verb continuous. Can be translated as "-ing"

吃飯 forms "eat (rice)"

Cool?

[zhouhana]

Oh, and if Hofmann's characters look different from the ones in your learning material and you're wondering about that, it's because he used traditional characters (used in Hong Kong and Taiwan). With simplified characters (the ones used in Mainland China) it's 他们在吃饭.

[roddy]

"Sry for the noob question"

Noob questions are welcome, txt spk and unhelpful titles aren't - will edit it.