Gerundio and present participle - exact same thing in Spanish ?
Fellow learners
Another one of those discussed-to-death but unresolved topics. I'd like to clarify what I think I have just found out.
The English Gerund and the Spanish Gerundio are different beasts. In this case I agree with the comments on this site's explanation of it. The word "Gerund" shouldn't be used since it's not the same as "Gerundium" and, after all, that is what is described there, right ?
In English not all words ending in "ing" are gerunds since you need to have a noun derived from a verb for that to be true.
"I have been running" - NOT gerund. "Running is fun" - Gerund.
However, in Spanish that is not the case right ? To make this crystal clear :
"Sin saber porque" it NOT a Spanish gerundium but is translated into the English gerund "Without knowing why", correct ?
What I'm unclear about is whether gerundio and present participle are 100% interchangeable in Spanish as they are not in English. It seems to be true but then why have 2 definitions of exactly the same thing ? Is one on its way out ? Is the gerundium the new fancy word for present participle ? I'd prefer each verb in the conjugation table to have these 3 entries
Infinitive, Present Participle, Past Participle
Wouldn't that make more sense ?
7 Answers
The English gerund is the nominal form of a verb, and it is often translated as an infinitivo, which is the nominal form of a verb in Spanish.
The English present participle is translated as a Spanish gerundio in most continuous tenses, but not when it is used as an adjective (eg. a talking bird.)
The sentence "sin saber por qué" uses the Spanish infinitivo because after "sin" you'd expect a noun, and infinitivos are nouns. In English you say "without knowing it", using a gerund because you'd expect a noun after "without", and gerunds are nouns.
My advice: use the term gerundio when talking about Spanish grammar, because calling it gerund is very confusing.
So you are saying that the english grammatical expression "present participle" directly translates to the spanish "gerundio" ?
No, I said that a sentence in English with a present participle used in a progressive construction (eg. I am writing) is likely to be translated into Spanish by using our gerundio. The English present participle can also be used as an adjective (see example 3 below), but in Spanish this is only possible in a few cases.
1) I am writing a book - Estoy escribiendo un libro [gerundio]
2) They found him sleeping on the floor - Lo encontraron durmiendo en el suelo [gerundio]
3) He is a working person - [You cannot even use a verb to translate "working". The alternative is the adjective "trabajadora"]
4) I am going shopping - [Again, no verbal equivalent in Spanish. You have to say "Voy de compras"]
Regarding the so called "participios activos", this terminology has been abandoned by most grammarians long ago, because the modern consensus is that words like "suavizante" are not verbal forms, but adjectives created from verbs. Unlike in English, where you can take virtually any verb, add -ing, and use it as an adjective, you cannot do that in Spanish. There will be some adjectives from verbs ending in -nte (as you said), but others will use -or instead, or -ín, or -izo, or -az, or many other endings, and you cannot predict which one. Examples:
move - moving // conmover - conmovedor
depress - depressing // deprimir - deprimente
decorate - decorating // decorar - decorativo
See? Unfortunately, "conmovente" and "decorante" do not exist at all; you cannot do that with any verb you chose. In the three examples above, in English you are using present participles, whereas in Spanish you are picking specific adjectives from the dictionary.
English has also words like these, with a full range of endings (taken from French, mainly), but there is also the easy option of using the -ing form, which is not available in Spanish.
Summing up: present participles used in progressive constructions can normally (but not always) be successfully translated using Spanish gerunds. However, when the present participle is used as an adjective, you may be able to find a suitable Spanish adjective for the translation (and only some of those adjective would be "active participles"), but otherwise you will have to express it using a different construction.
@stucky101: I doubt there is any situation where the Spanish gerundio and the English gerund are equivalent at all. That's the problem with the nomenclature. You can sometimes use infinitivos to translate gerunds, and often gerundios to translate present participles, but that's all.
The closest thing that we have in Spanish to an English present participle is called gerundio, which shares nothing with the English gerund. The English gerund can be translated into Spanish using the infinitivo just in some cases, but there are numerous uses of the English gerund that have no equivalent in Spanish (there actually a few words, but nothing systematic), so many sentences with gerunds have to be completely rephrased when you translate them. The Spanish infinitivo is NOT the same as the English gerund, although in a few situations they can be used for the same purpose. In Spanish, infinitivos and gerundios look different (unlike gerunds and present participles) and are used differently, so there is no room for confusion between the two of them:
Infinitivos always end in -ar, -er or -ir.
gerundios always end in -ndo.
Did that answer your question? If I didn't, ask again, but remember that Spanish has no gerunds or present participles; it has gerundios and infinitivos, which although they sometimes can be used like the English gerunds and present participles, they are different from them, and they look and sound different from one another.
Well actually gerund and gerundio sometimes are the same thing and sometimes not.why? Because some kind of sentences are not constructed in the same way. So in spanish in that kind of sentences sin saber porque is said with infinitive but in english it's gerund.
And also in english there are verbs such as infinitive and gerund. Some verbs take a gerund verb after it , and others infinitive.
I like swimming or I want to go there by myself.
But in spanish ;
Me gusta nadar. and Quiero irme ahi por mi mismo.
Another different example;
Cuando me llamaste estaba viendo una película.
and in english also;
When you called me I was watching a movie.
As you see, in this situation they are the same thing. Therefore you can never say that they are not the same thing but you can say that the point of view of using them in 2 languages is different. I hope this helps you... 
Lazarus
Thanks for the very good and detailed explanations ! I believe a summary of all your posts would be a wonderful addition to the explanation of the gerund on this site.
OMG !! Wait a minute...I think we're getting to the bottom of the issue here. My teacher uses the same old book for his students that he used to learn Spanish. It's from 1974 but he loves it. In there it teaches the following :
"The Present participle, which in English ends in -ing, is regularly formed in Spanish by adding -ando to the stem of -ar verbs, and iendo to the stem of -er verbs and -ir verbs. The present participle always ends in -o. Forms of present participles which are irregular will be given later"
Not a word about "gerund" or "gerundio" ! This baffled me since I thought I had just read the exact description of a "gerundio" and this started the whole discussion. So you are saying that the english grammatical expression "present participle" directly translates to the spanish "gerundio" ? Then maybe I misread the book ? It makes one think there is such a thing as "present participle" in spanish as well. Every other book I've seen doesn't mention "present participles" for spanish at all but uses the word "gerund" instead which, of course, is also wrong since they should call it "gerundio". Jeez - I think this just topped leismo as far as the level of confusion goes. Holy cow I just looked up participles on wikipedia and they say spanish has something called "participio de presente": "In Spanish, the present or active participle (participio activo or participio de presente) of a verb is traditionally formed with one of the suffixes -ante, -ente or -iente" What? So "participio de presente" is NOT the spanish version of "present participle" ? I'm lost.
Lazarus
First off, thanks for spotting my grammar boo-boo !
Ok. There are really 2 question buried in here.
Q. Is Spanish gerundio and English gerund the same ? A. The English gerund and the Spanish gerundo overlap at times but are otherwise different. I get that now.
However, I don't think I have seen an answer for my question regarding gerundio and present participle yet. Let me clarify. I'm talking about the difference between the Spanish gerundo and the Spanish present participle (not the English one) so the comparison is not between 2 languages but between 2 verbforms of the same language.
Is there a sentence in Spanish where we use the Spanish gerundio but it isn't also considered the spanish present participle or vice versa ? I'm just not clear on whether these 2 are describing the same thing in Spanish or not.
