In my quest to respond to another post I got myself confused by this page and its section on gerunds. In English gerunds often function as nouns, so this equivalence does not settle with me due to the -e ending.

In my experience it seems like the infinitive is used in place of gerunds in gerund phrases, but the -ado form is used when the gerund is by itself:

"I don't like sitting alone" -- "Mi ne ŝatas sidi sole"
"I don't like sitting" -- "Mi ne ŝatas sidadon"

But in other cases the gerund seems to fill the same function as adverbial participles. I'm particularly perplexed by the difference between these two sentences:
"Being deceived can make one feel angry" -- not sure, possibly "Esti trompata povas kolerigi"
"Being deceived, he became angry" -- classic example of adverbial participle usage "Trompate, li ekkoleris."

For those with more experience than I, how do you translate English gerunds/gerund phrases into Esperanto? What do you consider the difference between adverbial participles and gerunds?

Is it important to you to give something a special name as a gerund or an adverbial participle? Esperanto grammar doesn't always fit into neat boxes defined by grammarians for other languages (hence the reason why PMEG uses non-traditional terminology, such as "e-words" and "o-words", to talk about Esperanto grammar).

If I were you I'd focus more on correct translation on certain ideas, and less on finding a precise mapping of English grammatical forms to Esperanto grammatical forms. That's a crazy-making topic if ever there was one.

erinja:Is it important to you to give something a special name as a gerund or an adverbial participle? Esperanto grammar doesn't always fit into neat boxes defined by grammarians for other languages (hence the reason why PMEG uses non-traditional terminology, such as "e-words" and "o-words", to talk about Esperanto grammar).

If I were you I'd focus more on correct translation on certain ideas, and less on finding a precise mapping of English grammatical forms to Esperanto grammatical forms. That's a crazy-making topic if ever there was one.

I definitely agree that the same boxes should not be used for both languages; it just surprised me when I found a reference site using 'gerund' to describe adverbial participles.

kaŝperanto:

erinja:Is it important to you to give something a special name as a gerund or an adverbial participle? Esperanto grammar doesn't always fit into neat boxes defined by grammarians for other languages (hence the reason why PMEG uses non-traditional terminology, such as "e-words" and "o-words", to talk about Esperanto grammar).

If I were you I'd focus more on correct translation on certain ideas, and less on finding a precise mapping of English grammatical forms to Esperanto grammatical forms. That's a crazy-making topic if ever there was one.

I definitely agree that the same boxes should not be used for both languages; it just surprised me when I found a reference site using 'gerund' to describe adverbial participles.

In English gerundium is used like adverbial participles in Esperanto.

Most reference sites aren't written by experts. Or, people know a term from grammar and apply it as best they can to Esperanto grammar.

As an example, the lernu site has gotten complaints from time to time about referring to endings like /in/ and /ist/ as "suffixes". The users say, no, they are in fact infixes, because they aren't at the very end of a word. But infix also don't perfectly describe how these words work; indeed, they may appear at the beginning (isto, ino), middle (instruisto, virino) or end (instruist', virin') of a word, depending on the situation. We use the word "suffix" knowing that it isn't strictly true but lacking a really good English word to use for this meaning.

michaleo:
In English gerundium is used like adverbial participles in Esperanto.

But I have never seen an adverbial participle used as a noun as gerunds can be used in English. I have always seen the -i or -ado endings used in those situations. Although the reading I've done indicates that English stole gerund from Latin, so our usage may not be the most universal.

kaŝperanto:

michaleo:
In English gerundium is used like adverbial participles in Esperanto.

But I have never seen an adverbial participle used as a noun as gerunds can be used in English. I have always seen the -i or -ado endings used in those situations. Although the reading I've done indicates that English stole gerund from Latin, so our usage may not be the most universal.

It's true and the author of this site doesn't claim that the using of Esperanto adverbial participles in this way is correct.

The site's so-called gerunds are used in correct Esperanto sentences. But I would agree that an ending like -ante isn't a gerund according to my own understanding of a gerund and it's confusing to call it one.

michaleo:

kaŝperanto:

michaleo:
In English gerundium is used like adverbial participles in Esperanto.

But I have never seen an adverbial participle used as a noun as gerunds can be used in English. I have always seen the -i or -ado endings used in those situations. Although the reading I've done indicates that English stole gerund from Latin, so our usage may not be the most universal.

It's true and the author of this site doesn't claim that the using of Esperanto adverbial participles in this way is correct.

erinja:The site's so-called gerunds are used in correct Esperanto sentences. But I would agree that an ending like -ante isn't a gerund according to my own understanding of a gerund and it's confusing to call it one.

They did demonstrate correct usage, but in teaching an English audience the use of that term may be damaging to the basic understanding of adverbial participles. I can see that maybe putting a familiar term to use may trick people into being comfortable with them, but maybe an explanation that they are (approximately) a subset of English gerunds may be apt. I think the use of -ado for true verb-nouns is more clear than using -ing for both.

On a side note, has anyone ever heard the -ado ending used with an adjective in a phrase? I'm thinking something like "Running alone is not fun" ~= "Kurado sola ne estas amuza".
Or even something where the infinitive is awkward, like "Tro da kurado sola ne estas amuza."

kaŝperanto:

michaleo:
In English gerundium is used like adverbial participles in Esperanto.

But I have never seen an adverbial participle used as a noun as gerunds can be used in English. I have always seen the -i or -ado endings used in those situations. Although the reading I've done indicates that English stole gerund from Latin, so our usage may not be the most universal.

The problem is terminology wrongly used. A gerund is a non-finite verb form that is used as a noun. A participle is a non-finite verb form used as an adjective. The problem arises because in English, the same ending (-ing) is used for both gerund and the present participle. Some people (incorrectly) use the term "gerund" for both; others use the term "participle."