#arraysabyt
frank nymph
regal patio
This is called a gerund and it’s translated differently depending on the context
In general French does not distinguish between a simple and a continuous form so the continuous tenses (any tense that is made from the verb ‘to be’ plus the gerund like present continuous ‘I am going’, past continuous ‘I was going’, etc) are treated the same as their simple counterparts: the French simple present « je vais » can be interpreted as either ‘I go’ or ‘I am going’.
small basin
Ah okay so if you were playing basketball or something you’d just say Je joue au basket -> I am playing basketball
regal patio
Yeah
But it gets a bit more choppy in the past tenses
You see, the continuous tenses imply duration or something that doesn’t have a clear start/end, which means that they will be translated differently
For example, the present perfect continuous (to have been + verb-ing) describes an action that started in the past and still continues to this day. For example, in the phrase, ‘I’ve been living in Paris for 10 years’, this means that ten years ago from the moment you said that sentence, you started living in Paris, and that you are still living there continuously.
French translates this sentence, because it doesn’t have the present perfect continuous, with the present. « J’habite à Paris depuis 10 ans ». Notice also the change in time preposition with the English ‘for (pour)’ and the French « depuis (since) ».
The past perfect continuous (to had been + verb-ing) describes an action that happened further in the past compared to another past action that still happened when the latter past action happened, but no longer is happening at present. In the phrase, ‘I had been living in Paris for five years before I decided to leave for Bordeaux a year ago’, we have two past actions: moving to Bordeaux (the past action) and living in Paris (the event that’s further past from the past action). In French, to describe something an event that has duration before a past action, we use the imperfect (imparfait) here: « J’habitais à Paris depuis cinq ans avant de décider de partir pour Bordeaux il y a un an ».
That might not seem like a major thing to you, but note that we commonly translate the imperfect as either the past continuous (Je marchais dans la rue quand j’ai vu un accident / I was walking in the street when I saw an accident) or a past habit (Emma allait au lycée à 08h00 tous les jours / Emma used to go to high school at 08.00 [8 AM] every day), so seeing this translation might trip up some things.
In addition, we also use the English gerund in other contexts. An example would be acting as objects. In the sentences ‘I love drinking coffee’ and ‘Walking is good’, the gerunds used here can be switched out for the infinitive since they describe an activity and not actually doing that activity. In French, we would use the infinitive: « J’aime boire le café » and « Marcher est bon / C’est bon de marcher »
After prepositions, English infinitives transform into their gerund forms whereas French infinitives remain, well, as infinitives
French verbs can be governed by five or so prepositions, « à, de, pour, par, sans » and all are followed by the infinitive:
« Est-ce que tu cherchais à me tuer, Bernard ? »
« Ah oui, il faudrait que je me contente de jouer le con. Quelle surprise. »
« Anna est venue pour te parler, Jean. Elle m'a dit qu'elle regrettait ses mots. »
« Tu t'attends à ce que je commence par te dire la vérité ? »
« Tu te méfies de moi sans même connaitre la vérité ? »
English prepositions are so much more numerous and followed by the gerund:
'I'm preparing the explosives for getting us out of here.'
'We both know I'm not above killing children, but I'm not wasteful.'
'Was he insisting on meeting me?'
'So you still believe in fighting the good fight?'
'I know you don't approve of me dating her, but I love her.'
'I'm looking forward to hearing from you again.'
The preposition 'to' can either be followed by the infinitive or the gerund depending on whether or not 'to' belongs to the infinitive or the previous structure.
'If you want to talk to that Belter, you put him in the tank!' [want + to talk]
'I'm looking forward to hearing from you again.' [to look forward to + to hear = to look forward to hearing]
What else
Oh the gerundives
In French, there actually exists an equivalent to the gerund: the present participle. These are words that end in -ant so « marchant, finissant, ouvrant, rendant, écrivant, recevant ». I didn’t mention them because their usage is very limited compared to English. French present participles are used in two contexts: (1) The Gerundive (gérondif) and (2) Replacing subordinate clauses
(1) Gerundive
The gerundive describes a simultaneous action that happens with another main action: the idea is to stop you from repeating words. You form this by using the preposition « en » and the present participle. « Je mange une baguette en marchant (I eat a baguette while walking) ».
You can also use the gerundive to describe cause: « J’entre dans la chambre en ouvrant la porte (I enter the room by opening the door) ». In English we would use different prepositions (notice I used ‘while’ for the first but ‘by’ for the second) but in French it’s all just « en ».
small basin
It all sounds very confusing, I have a question or two though, I wasn’t sure if the preset participle was used as commonly in french, therefore I never really had heard of it so is it commonly used, additionally is there any sort of way to recognise which verbs would have which preposition or is there some sort of theme to that too? It’s all quite confusing, I only seemed to be familiar with the “en train de “verb”” sort of thing but the rest makes sense to an extent
regal patio
(2) Subordinate clauses
The present participle by itself can be used to replace a number of subordinate clauses.
(a) Subjective subordinate clauses
These are clauses where the replaced noun is the subject. In the sentence « Je parle de Marc qui fait ses tâches (I’m talking about Mark who is doing his tasks) », I can replace it with the present participle: « Je parle de Marc faisant ses tâches (I’m talking about Mark doing his tasks) ».
(b) Adverbial clauses
This is a much wider class where I can replace a clause explaining reason or cause.
« Puisqu’il voulait partir, il a décidé de quitter la salle. (Since he wanted to leave, he decided to leave the room.) »
=> « Voulant partir, il a décidé de quitter la salle. (Wanting to leave, he decided to leave the room.) »
regal patio
It all sounds very confusing, I have a question or two though, I wasn’t sure if ...
Sorry about that I was bored in my commute so I decided to explain everything because I could
The present participle is used commonly but mostly in the gerundive
As to which verbs have which preposition, that depends on the verb so it’s a matter of memorisation
As to the confusion, the past participle/gerundive is to be honest a more intermediate thing so you should focus on the verbs