“It rains”, “it’s raining” ,“rain falls”, or “rain is falling”, all are ways to describe the presence of a rainfall in English. “Rain is falling” is rather poetic, but also used to begin a more detailed description. “Rain falls” is a rare variant. “It rains” and “it’s raining” are common expressions, although the latter sounds more English.

“Ame-ga futte-iru (雨が降っている)” and “ame-ga furu (雨が降る)” are the ways to describe the same weather in Japanese. The former equals “rain is falling” and the latter equals “rain falls” but in Japanese this is the usual way to describe the presence of a rainfall, not an especially poetic way. Furu (降る) on its own already means to precipitate. Ame (雨) is the Japanese word for rain.

“Es regnet” and “Regen fällt” are the ways to describe the presence of a rainfall in German. These expressions equal “it rains” and “rain falls”. Other possibilities wouldn’t sound natural. “Regen fällt” is rather poetic and “es regnet” is common also in German. This construction makes many immigrants wonder what is es = it. Shouldn’t this pronoun refer to something mentioned beforehand? Because most of the immigrants come from the Islamic World, so they often decide that es = it refers to Allah. Who else has the power to send rain? They have no problem with referring to Allah with a word of neutral gender because they know that the Creator of the world isn’t a wild animal producing half-gods. Usually referring to Allah with words of male gender isn’t a contradiction because Arabian knows only the male and the female gender.

An almighty being sending rain is an interesting way to interpret “es regnet” as well as the Chinese way to describe the same weather: tiān xià yǔ (天下雨). This literally is the sky drops rain. The Chinese word for weather is tiānqì (天氣). The English word energy goes back to the Ancient Greek word enérgeia (ἐνέργεια) and this word got coined for describing what is necessary for transferring a potentiality into actuality. Tiān (天) or the sky has the potentiality for all weather conditions. The qì (氣) of the sky puts them into actuality. So tiānqì (天氣) is the weather and qì (氣) means energy. This is an example of how there is nothing mysterious about qì (氣), but the concept instead resembling very much the Ancient Greek concept of enérgeia (ἐνέργεια).