⇒ Present participles in Spanish are verb forms used to express continuous or ongoing actions

⇒ Spanish present participles end in -ndo, which is the equivalent of the English ending -ing.

⇒ Check out the present participles in the examples below.

⇒ In Spanish, the verb form that ends in -ndo is called the gerundio. It is used in compound verb forms, such as Estoy nadando. (I'm swimming.), as well as adverbially, as in Salió corriendo. (literally, He left running.)

⇒ In English, a gerund is the noun form of a verb, such as swimming in the sentence Swimming is fun. (Es divertido nadar.). In Spanish, this form is translated using an infinitive verb, such as nadar.

⇒ The term used for the -ing form used in compound verbs in English is the present participle.

⇒ To form the gerundio of regular verbs, most of the time you just drop the infinitive ending (-ar, -er, -ir) and add -ando to the stem of -ar verbs and -iendo to the stem of -er and -ir verbs

⇒ Check out the table below to see how to form gerundios.

⇒ If the stem of an -er or -ir verb ends in a vowel, -iendo becomes -yendo. Check out the examples below.

⇒ Pro tip: whenever an unstressed i appears between two vowels, the spelling always changes to a y.

⇒ Ir (to go) is an irregular verb, and does not follow the pattern above. For pronunciation reasons, the gerundio of ir is yendo.

⇒ If the stem of an -er or -ir verb ends in -ll or -ñ, -iendo becomes -endo.

⇒ There are also some verbs that need a stem change before adding the gerundio ending to maintain pronunciation:

• Any -ir verb that has a stem change in the third person preterite (e > i, or o > u) will have the same stem change in the gerundio.
• The -er verb poder also maintains its preterite stem change in the gerundio.