Professor Dave again, let’s talk gerunds.
You may have heard the word “gerund” before, so what does this mean?
Gerund is an invariable mood derived from Latin, though the Italian differs considerably,
as unlike Latin, the Italian gerund has only one form.
The word itself means “that must be carried out”, because this form is a verbal noun,
which in Latin, inflects.
In Italian, fortunately, it doesn’t, and the gerund can be generated by adding one
of two different suffixes to the infinitive.
The first conjugation will use ando, as in mangiando, and the second and third conjugations
will use endo, as in scrivendo, or dormendo, and that’s all there is to it.
A few irregular verbs form their gerund from the imperfect base.
So what does this form mean?
It is usually translated into English as the ING form of the verb, and describes contemporaneity
with the action of the main verb.
Of course, if you really dislike this tense, the gerund can easily be avoided by transforming
the sentence.
The most common use of this mood is the periphrasis of stare plus the gerund in order to express
a progressive action.
Progressive means ongoing, and stare substitutes for the English “to be”.
The difference is that the first sentence means “I eat meat”.
This can easily be interpreted as meaning “I eat meat” in the general sense.
But the second sentence means “I am eating meat”, which is action that is necessarily
happening right now.
Let’s do the full conjugation with stare and the gerund for mangiare.
So this is actually quite easy to use, and very common in everyday speech.
Let’s see some more examples that you might hear frequently.
And that’s it for gerunds, so to make sure we have this down, let’s check comprehension.