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i'm working in a hotel cafe.  a french couple ordered special coffees.  i finished one, gave it to the man and said the other one is "en train."  i just looked at a dictionary.  i see that "mettre en train" is there but not to merely say that something is "en train."  i'm sure he understood me (and was grateful i attempted french since he spoke so little english).  but rather than saying "je suis en train de preparer..." is it acceptable to say something is "en train?"  i thought i'd heard it.  merci  

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I suspect not . "(se) mettre en train" is used but I  would expect to hear "en train"  followed by a "de".

if I heard "en train" being used  in a stand alone way ,it would sound wrong to me .

As usual French speakers or   linguists  more qualified than I am   may be able to contradict me .

Your are right George, "en train" is never used without "de" or it would literally mean "in a train".

Subject + "en train de" + Verb + complement  is somewhat equivalent to the "-ing" form in English BUT with a big difference: it doesn't work for passive forms.

I mean the subject must be someone or something actually doing an action actively.

In this case, the coffee is being prepared. The coffee is not doing something by itself, so it's a passive form and you cannot use "en train de ".

You have to "get around" the problem :

- You can change the subject to switch to an active form and place your colleague as subject "Mon collègue est en train de préparer le deuxième café". Works also for the coffee machine : "La machine est entrain de préparer le deuxième café"

- There is an easy way to say in French that something is being prepared and will arrive shortly : "It's on its way" - "Il arrive" or "Le deuxième arrive". Its very often used in bars/restaurants like  "ça vient", "ça arrive", "j'arrive" ...etc.

Don't worry, event if it's grammatically wrong, any french speaker will understand if you just say "en train" referring to something that will arrive shortly, no one will think you are talking about a real train, but they will guess your level of French is not very good ^^

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