lightning

[Peter Richardson]

My first-year German text gives equivalents for It's thundering, It's
raining, It's snowing, and There's lightning. Does everyone get around the
participle this way to avoid the double -ing-ing (i.e.*It's lightninging)?
Do other polysyllabic -ing verbs come to mind that are treated that way?
(Monosyllabic Bring, Ring, Sing, etc. seem to be OK.)

Something of this sort seems to be taking place in Swiss German, which has
an -ik equivalent of the Standard German noun suffix -ung unless the
previous syllable was <-ig>, i.e.:
        Standard German         but     Swiss German
        Ordnung                         [ortnik]
        Sammlung                        [samlik]
        Entschuldigung                  Entschuldigung
        Beendigung                      Beendigung

Peter R.