{"id":11595,"date":"2026-03-17T12:27:47","date_gmt":"2026-03-17T11:27:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/coursdefrancais.nl\/2026\/03\/17\/present-participle-and-gerund\/"},"modified":"2026-03-17T12:27:50","modified_gmt":"2026-03-17T11:27:50","slug":"present-participle-and-gerund","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/coursdefrancais.nl\/en\/present-participle-and-gerund\/","title":{"rendered":"Present participle and gerund"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>Of course, you are familiar with the present tense when speaking in the present. But did you know that there is also a present participle? <\/strong><\/p>\n<p>When something is happening now, you use the present tense. In French, there is also a more specific way to indicate that something is occurring at this moment: the present participle. You can recognize this form by the -ant suffix added to the verb.  <\/p>\n<p><strong>Participe pr\u00e9sent<\/strong><br \/>The present participle directly describes a noun.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>J\u2019ai vu Martin achetant des pommes. (I saw Martin buying apples.) <\/li>\n<li>C\u2019est un livre traitant de l\u2019art contemporain. (It is a book about contemporary art.) <\/li>\n<li>Les gens buvant un verre dans le bar. (The people drinking a glass in the bar.) <\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>G\u00e9rondif<br \/><\/strong>The gerund is formed in the same way. You use this form when two events occur simultaneously and when the main clause and the subordinate clause have the same subject.<br \/>The gerund always follows the word en. <\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>J\u2019ai vu Martin en achetant des pommes. (I saw Martin while I was buying apples.) <\/li>\n<li>On peut se d\u00e9tendre en lisant un livre. (You can relax while reading a book.) <\/li>\n<li>Les gens dansent en buvant dans le bar. (The people dancing and drinking in the bar.)\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>Try it yourself?<\/strong><br \/>You form the present participle or the gerund by taking the &#8216;nous&#8217; form of a verb and replacing the &#8216;-ons&#8217; ending with &#8216;-ant&#8217;. <br \/>So:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>nous voulons &gt; voul- &gt; voulant<\/li>\n<li>nous achetons &gt; achet- &gt; achetant<\/li>\n<li>nous dansons &gt; dans- &gt; dansant<\/li>\n<li>nous voyons &gt; voy- &gt; voyant<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>Attention<\/strong><br \/>There are three exceptions: \u00e9tant (from \u00eatre\/to be), ayant (from avoir\/to have), and sachant (from savoir\/to know).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Of course, you are familiar with the present tense when speaking in the present. But did you know that there is also a present participle? When something is happening now, you use the present tense. In French, there is also a more specific way to indicate that something is occurring at this moment: the present [&#8230;]\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":6712,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[41],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11595","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-blog"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO Premium plugin v28.6 (Yoast SEO v28.7) - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-premium-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Present participle and gerund - Cours de Francais<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/coursdefrancais.nl\/en\/present-participle-and-gerund\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Present participle and gerund\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Of course, you are familiar with the present tense when speaking in the present. 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