ivofr

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[strong dagger]

French does have a gerund form, le participe présent, which is stem + -ant. « donnant, vendant, marchant, choissisant », etcetera. This present participle is used in two ways:

1. Gérondif / gerundive
   This is to describe an action being done at the same time as another action. Usually in English it's 'while/by X-ing' so for example:
   « On voit un chien en se promenant (We see a dog while taking a walk) »
   « En te donnant ce cadeau, j'espère qu'on resterait amis (By giving this gift to you, I hope we would stay friends) »
2. Participe (participle)
   This is mainly to replace « qui + verbe » constructions. For example, we can have the sentence, « On voit Michel qui marche (We're looking at Michael who is walking) » and we can replace that with « On voit Michel marchant (We're looking at Michael walking) »

That being said, the English gerund appears under two more contexts where French wouldn't use them.

1. Verbs acting as nouns/verbs as infinitives
   This is to describe both verbs when they're acting as nouns and verbs as infinitives. You can tell because normally in English you can swap them and it'll still make sense.
   1a) « Croire est voir (To believe is to see/Believing is seeing) »
   1b) « J'aime chanter (I love to sing/I love singing) »
2. Verb conjugations
   This is mainly in the context of progressive/continuous tenses like the present continuous (I am walking). This is a tad more complicated because they're covered by different tenses in different contexts but in general, the continuous tenses are usually translated with their equivalent non-continuous tenses so the present continuous (I am walking) is translated as the présent (je marche) which is the same as the simple present (I walk).