.. the quivering Gerund..

Having planned to write about the GERUND today, I searched around a bit for funny pictures ( I knew that Gerald Scarfe had drawn some cartoon "gerunds" somewhere) etc... but found a few other interesting things.

One of my "jobs" with this blog is to show other learners of Spanish (like me) interesting resources, good things to read and listen to, learning aids, handy mnemonics etc.

Well then , in my search for GERUND things, I found a really nice Spanish-language blog by someone calling herself "Gerund".. I've put a link to it in the sidebar. Just reading a little bit of her blog I found myself looking up quite a few new words,some of which I haven't deciphered yet That's a good thing in itself.

Her blog title ends with " y otros comics bajo presupuesto ".. well bajo presupuesto means " budget-priced, low-cost" which is new to me and very useful for a skinflint like me. Her blog address itself is, in part, violentamentefeliz, or "vf" which seems to be the name of a comic ... obviously I need to read more! It's always good and motivational to be looking forward to reading some new Spanish stuff.

Anyway, I found a few of Scarfe's Gerund drawings, including " A fierce gerund attacks two harmless pronouns" and " A Gerund cuts a Gerundive."

You can get T-Shirts with "Ask Me About Gerunds" on them as well.

In English, gerunds are -ing words like running, walking, eating, talking and so on... we use them a lot in many different contexts and as several different parts of speech.
In " A Baking tray" it's an adjective
When we say " Henry was dribbling" we use it as a part of a verb formation.
In " Fishing is the top recreation in the UK for males" it's a noun.

Luckily in Spanish its use it limited to a few special cases.
And the gerund is INVARIABLE!! What relief that word brings to the language learner... I'll say it again.. theGerund is INVARIABLE. ¡ Fatal !

all you have to do is...

Stick -ando to the stem of -ar verbs
Stick -iendo to the stem of -ir and -er verbs

If the stem ends in a pesky vowel, you just stick a "y" in... so the gerund of caer = cayendo.

AMAZINGLY only 3 verbs have a [slightly] odd gerund...

Venir.... viniendo
Decir ...diciendo
Poder ... pudiendo they aren't too awkward.

One awkward thing though is that it is easy to think that some Spanish adjectives which end in -ente / iente / or - ante are gerunds.
But these always qualify NOUNS not VERBS.

In Spanish it is often used with a verb to desribe what is happening a bit more... "He came stumbing across the lawn" where "stumbling" is an adverb making it clear exactly how he "came" across the lawn.

Well, next time, lots of gerunds in use, and some more info about them .

But I've gone on for long enough.. here is the music... it's Mai Meneses singing " Ne Me Quiero Morir " with her great guitar player Kim Fanlo [ together they are called Nena Daconte] and a noisy chattery audience..



and here's those letras de cancion..

El mundo ya no gira, ¡y que me digan! , en la misma dirección.
La gente ya no dice lo que piensa y en medio estamos tu y yo.
Que vamos caminando por la vida sin querer mirar atrás, soñando y con lo puesto, así se vive, hace falta poco más.

No me quiero morir pensando que otra vez se me escapo la libertad, pensando que también me he vuelto a equivocar bajo un cielo tan inmenso.
No me quiero morir pensando que tal vez se nos quedó la soledad bailando, bailando.

Después de cada día llegan las noches contigo pero un día no vendrán.
El dinero que he ganado con mi tiempo, eso no lo va a cambiar.

Por mucho que lo busco yo no veo que después haya algo más.
Sólo ser agradecida por bagar a la deriva. Me da ganas de gritar.

No me quiero morir pensando que otra vez se me escapo la libertad, pensando que también me he vuelto a equivocar bajo un cielo tan inmenso.
No me quiero morir pensando que tal vez se nos quedó la soledad bailando, bailando.

Well, I wonder why I chose that song... it's from ther CD Retales de Carnaval.

If you want a neater, clearer studio version, here it is... but you've only got a still picture to look at...