'Wanting' progressive

Good afternoon,

"To be honest, Matt, I'm thinking about it - I've been with Evergreen for nearly five years. I've got about as far as I can with them. I want a new challenge"

I was wondering if "I'm wanting a new challenge" would be possible here.

Thanks,

Funambule

Verbs like love, want, like...(I believe there are more)....are not used in the continuous form.

I added generally because I'm sure one can find a substantial number of counter-examples.

LV4-26 is right: normally, it's not an alternative. But there are often idioms where the progressive has a subtly different meaning that's rather hard to pin down. 'I'm wanting' isn't absolutely ungrammatical. I think if someone used it (which would be very rare), it would mean something like "whenever I think about this, it again occurs to me I want a new challenge".

Edit. I've looked through BNC and found a real example: 'Something I've to do for quite some time.' Now this means the same as 'Something I've to do for quite some time', but the 'for quite some time' emphasizes that it's not just thinking about it once and deciding you want to (and sticking to that decision for a long time), but repeatedly thinking about it.

Funambule said:

Good afternoon,

"To be honest, Matt, I'm thinking about it - I've been with Evergreen for nearly five years. I've got about as far as I can with them. I want a new challenge"

I was wondering if "I'm wanting a new challenge" would be possible here.

Thanks,

Funambule

"I'm wanting" and "I'm needing" are common in Scotland👁 Wink ;)

"I'm loving" remains the embarrassment of McDonald's.

Hello everybody,
I saw this thread and decided to add one example with the verb "love" that is not supposed to be used in continuous.
'I'm loving it" (but it exists)

Hi Funambule

You might like to check out these previous threads:
wanting
Are you wanting something?
Where are you wanting to use it?
needing, wanting
if you are wanting
I'm not wanting you to go
Are you wanting to
I have been wanting

'I'm loving' and 'I'm liking' share some of the repeatedness feel. It keeps on feeling good every time you think of it. (I love the taste of raspberries - that's a permanent state true about me - but I don't keep on thinking of them and going, wow, raspberries!)

You could say "I'm wanting a new challenge". But in this case, you've got to be perfectly aware you're breaking a commonly accepted usage. If you're doing it on purpose, because you intend to be more specific, because you want to convey some very special connotation, then you're making the language richer.

of course, as a non native, this is something I would do with extreme caution, if at all.

Conversely, if you use it as an interchangeable substitute for "I want a new challenge", then you're making the language poorer.

Only my opinion (which can be extended to the use of other stative verbs in the continuous and, more generally, to all "unusual" wordings).

Funambule your proposed alternative is typical of the type of grammatical distortion that is gaining popularity in colloquial spoken English. Consequently, it would sound ok spoken casually by someone who was also aware of having taken grammatical licence.