Irregular Present Progressive Gerunds

As you know, a gerund is affixed to a present progressive to form the Spanish equivalent of the English "-ing". There are some irregular gerund formations, which usually occur in verbs like caer("to fall") and leer("to read"). A "y" is injected in the word to avoid a clumping of vowels, and allows easier pronunciation:

leer leyendo

Manuel está leyendo su revista.

Manuel is reading his magazine.


caer cayendo

Estoy cayendo.

I am falling.


Other verbs that follow this pattern are traer("to bring"), poseer("to possess"), and oír("to hear").

Also, the -ir verbs that are irregular in the preterit third-person also carry forth the same irregularity into the gerund formation. Note the following chart of examples:

















Verb
Preterit Form
Gerund
dormir
durmió
durmiendo
morir
murió
muriendo
pedir
pidió
pidiendo
repetir
repitió
repitiendo
sentir
sintió
sintiendo
servir
sirvió
sirviendo



If you didn't have enough to worry about, there are also a couple of other irregularities that stand alone. The verbs poder("to be able to") and ir("to go") have as their gerunds pudiendo and yendo, respectively. Also, the two verbs venir("to come") and decir("to say, to tell") exhibit irregular gerunds:







decir
diciendo
venir
viniendo

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