>But how about street talk? Are all people really using the "I'm smoking a cigarette" sentence and do they never say "I smoke a cigarette"? I'm not referring here to formal speech, but to street talk. How about...
>
>"I was smoking a cigarette."
>"I smoked a cigarette."

Let me check my understanding until Terry comes back.

"was ***ing" - is a continuous thing, i.e. it lasted for a while, specifically at the time of event being talked about. "I was smoking a cigarette, when, to my amazement, the cigarette started getting shorter and shorter".

"***ed" happened once and was finished. "I smoked a cigarette and discovered I couldn't smoke it again".

It's much easier in Slavic (and I presume in Germanic) languages, where there are perfect and imperfect verbs. "Jeo sam" - "I was eating (something)", or "I used to eat". "Pojeo sam" - I ate it (up). Usually a verb has one continuous verb ("šiti" - to sew) and several perfect verbs ("zašiti" - to sew together, "našiti" to sew on, "ušiti" to sew in, also to score a formidable victory in a game, "prišiti" - to attach by sewing, also to pin something on someone innocent; rašiti - unsew). So the very verb itself contains this difference between continuous or one-time-and-done action.