Gerund Form of Verb

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Last Updated: Thursday, 06 June 2024 13:59

Published: Friday, 15 March 2024 13:38

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Gerund form:

We briefly saw in Verbs section that the gerund of Spanish verbs is equivalent to the English -ing form. This refers to verb in present, but it's progressing right now, so it's also called as "present progressive" in English/Spanish. However, it's not strictly "present progressive", as this is the V4 form of verb aka "Present participle". The present participle form is used in the past, present, and future progressive tenses to indicate that something is happening (or has happened or will be happening) over a period of time (i.e is walking, was walking, will be walking). In Spanish the gerund form is very easy, as it doesn't have a 3x2 table. All entries of 3x2 table are the same. The slight difference is in how -ar and -er/-ir verbs are treated. For making Gerund form of a verb, we replace -ar with  -ando (for -ar verb) and -er/-ir with -iendo (for -er/-ir verb).

-ing form of verbs require a "to be" verb like am, is, etc. We have to use "estar" form of the verb along with gerund form of main verb, which is "to be" for temporary state. Depending on present, past, future, etc, estar has to conjugated appropriately.

ex: I am running => Yo estoy corriendo. Here estar form is used for "am" as -ing form is always temporarary. So, we used estoy.

• Regular ve
  • ex: cantar (to sing) => singing => cantando
  • ex: hablar (to speak) => speaking => hablando (to speak is hablar, so -ando)
  • ex: comer/vivir (to eat / to live) => eating / living => comiendo / viviendo (-er/-ir verb, so -iendo). ex: He is eating => él ésta corriendo. (we use ésta for is, see in ser/estar section)
  • ex: hacer (to do) => doing => haciendo. ex: He is doing => él está haciendo.
• Irregular verbs: Irregular verbs explained in another section. In short, these are the verbs that don't follow the usual pattern. Ex of such verbs used in Gerund form:
  • ex: leer (to read) => reading => should be leiendo, but it sounds weird as there are 3 vowels next to each other -iei-, so we change it to leyendo
  • ex: dormir (to sleep) => sleeping. dormir is stem changing verb, with stem being "durm", so verb becomes durmiendo.
  • ex: decir (to say) => saying. stem for dec is dic. So, it's diciendo

 Present, Past and Future form of gerund:

As we saw above, the -ing verb remains same for all past/present/future forms, but the "to be" verb, estar changes form based on past/present/future forms

• Present Gerund: I am doing this work => estoy haciendo este trabajo. Follows regular present tense table for estar.
• Past Gerund: I was eating => yo estaba comiendo. Here "was" is used in imperfect form, as the event was an ongoing event in the past, and is also used for repeated or habitual events (i.e I used to eat cereals). The English translation may also mean "I used to be eating". We can't use past form of estar, i.e "estuve" as it can only be used in sentences like "I was hit" indicating completion of event in the past. Look in "ser/estar" section for conjugation of estar in past imperfect form.
• Future Gerund: I will be eating => yo estaré comiendo. estaré is the future form of verb estar. Look in "ser/estar" section for conjugation of estar in future form. Future form of all verbs are same irrespective of being -ar/-er/-ir. ser/estar also follows this pattern.