Italian All-in-One For Dummies (181 page)

-irsi: dimenticarsi
→
dimenticandosi
(
forgetting
):
Dimenticandoti
sempre tutto, prima o poi ti troverai nei guai
(
By always forgetting everything, sooner or later you will find yourself in troubles
).

When you have a reflexive, direct object, or indirect object pronoun (see
Chapter 3
in Book III for details on these pronouns), you attach it to the end of the gerund (again, the subject in the main and dependent clauses is the same), as in these examples:

Vedendomi
così in contemplazione, Angelina mi chiese . . .
(
Seeing me that way in contemplation, Angelina asked me . . .
)

Essendosi
alzati presto, i ragazzi hanno fatto una colazione abbondante.
(
Having woken up early, the kids had an abundant breakfast.
)

Parlandogli
a quattro occhi, mi sono resa conto che era un idiota.
(
Speaking to him face to face, I realized he was an idiot.
)

Working with Irregular Gerund Forms

Not every gerund construction is as easy as you see in the previous section, of course! You have to deal with some irregular gerund forms when writing and speaking in Italian. But even the irregular forms will come easily if you can master the irregular stems of the
imperfetto
(
imperfect tense;
see
Chapter 1
of Book V for details).

Verbs that have irregular stems in the imperfect tense — such as
bere
(
to drink
),
dire
(
to say; to tell
),
fare
(
to do; to make
),
porre
(
to pose
), and so on — also have irregular stems when forming a gerund. However, after you isolate the irregular stem, you add the appropriate gerund ending from the preceding section. This formation goes for all gerunds, period (whether they're in the present or past or combined with
stare
).

Bere:
Stai
bevendo
troppo!
(
You're drinking too much!
)

Dire:
Sto
dicendo
la verità!
(
I'm telling the truth!
)

Fare:
La mamma sta
facendo
la spesa.
(
Mom's buying groceries.
)

Porre
(like
imporre
and
supporre
):
Ponendo
il problema del giorno, il professore inizia la lezione.
(
Posing the problem of the day, the professor begins the class.
)

Creating Gerunds in the Past Tense

The past gerund is a compound tense that you form by using the gerund of
essere
(
essendo
[
having
]) or
avere
(
avendo
[
having
]) plus the past participle (see
Chapter 1
in Book V). Both past gerunds translate as
having . . .
.
It's understood that the subject in both the dependent and main clauses is the same.

Because reflexive verbs take
essere
in compound tenses, you use
essendosi
+ the past participle (see the previous sections to find out how to combine gerund endings and reflexive pronouns).

You can see from the following examples that there's no single way to translate the past gerund:

Avendo ballato
tutta la notte, i ragazzi erano stanchi.
(
Since they danced all night
/
Because they danced all night
/
Having danced all night, the boys and girls were tired.
)

Essendo partiti
presto, siamo arrivati in anticipo.
(
Having left early, we arrived early.
) This sentence can also mean
Because we left early/Given that we left early . . .

Essendosi innamorati
all'improvviso, i due erano confusi.
(
Because they fell in love quickly
/
Having fallen suddenly in love, both were confused.
)

Putting Gerunds in the Present Progressive

Il progressivo presente
(
present progressive
)
is a wonderful tense that you use to talk about something that's going on at the same time you're talking about it. In this way, the present progressive corresponds somewhat in meaning to the present indicative, but the gerunds in the present progressive allow you to more specifically refer to an action in progress. For example, when you say
Sto studiando
in the present progressive, it means
I'm studying
(right now, at this moment);
studio
in the present indicative can mean one of several things, including
I do study, I am studying, I study
.

To form the present progressive, you use the present form of
stare
(
to be
) + the present gerund form of the verb in question. The following table shows the conjugation of a verb in the present progressive and an example.