Is the gerund formed by adding -ante/-inte/-onte, or -ado ? I have seen conflicting views on this.

Ĉu oni faras la gerundion per aldoni -ante/-inte/-onte, aŭ per aldoni - ado? Mi vidis malsamajn vidojn pri ĉi tio.

Vi povas respondi en la angla aŭ Esperanto.

Esperanto has no gerund.
-ant- is the present participle active
-int- is the past participle active
-ont- is the future participle active.
-ad- marks repetition or duration and has nothing to do with gerunds.

To add to what Nornen said...

While the gerund in English looks like active present participle, it is actually a noun made from a verb (see for instance the EF language school's explanation).

Let's take the first example from that EF page:

    Eating people is wrong.

Here "eating" is a gerund indicating the subject of the sentence, what is wrong. "People" is the object of the gerund, i.e. the gerund retains something of its verbial base by being capable of having an object. The rest of the sentence ("is wrong") is just a description ("wrong") of the subject attached by using a copula ("is").

So let's put this in E-o. In English a verb cannot be a subject, but you have to gerundify (it there such word?) it, there is no such limit in E-o. "People" here refers to unspecified bunch of humans and since it's an object, you put it in accusative in E-o. The rest is trivial. Thus you have

    Manĝi homojn estas malĝusta.

Manĝi homojn estas malĝustE.
Then the subject is a verb, the predicative is an adverb.

sergejm:Manĝi homojn estas malĝustE.
Then the subject is a verb, the predicative is an adverb.

Vi pravas. I forgot that Slavic language trait.

nornen:Esperanto has no gerund.
-ant- is the present participle active
-int- is the past participle active
-ont- is the future participle active.
-ad- marks repetition or duration and has nothing to do with gerunds.

This is where I got the -ado suffix having something to do with gerunds

https://esperanto.stackexchange.com/questions/241/...

and this is where I got the ante, onte, inte part about gerunds. Now I'm confused because I'm getting conflicting sources.

http://esperanto.50webs.com/EsrGrammar-3_08.html

Nala_Cat15:
This is where I got the -ado suffix having something to do with gerunds

https://esperanto.stackexchange.com/questions/241/...

and this is where I got the ante, onte, inte part about gerunds. Now I'm confused because I'm getting conflicting sources.

http://esperanto.50webs.com/EsrGrammar-3_08.html

I'm not a native English speaker, so I might have understood things wrong, when it comes to the English grammar. Given that disclaimer the explanation in Stackexchange looks credible to me. Also note, what they say about English mixing things. There are many such cases.

Anyway the Esperanto grammar in 50webs is wrong (and have typos). Adverbial participles in E-o are more like phrase equivalents, shortered sub-phrases.

Promenante ili kantis : While they were walking, they sung -> While walking they sung.

The tenses are hard to get right, since the tense in the participle is relative to the predicate, main verb, and not absolute [all together: what??]. Thus while the singing took place in the past (kantis), the walking happened at the same time (promenante) as the singing. For me the passive forms become easily uncomprehensible.

There are a couple of adverbial participles, that are more like fixed expressions (bedaŭrinde, konsentinte), that are useful in normal speech and writing, but otherwise I recommend to avoid them.

sergejm:Manĝi homojn estas malĝustE.
Then the subject is a verb, the predicative is an adverb.

Or, to be more gerund-like, one could say "Manĝado de homoj estas malĝusta".

MiMalamasLaAnglan:

sergejm:Manĝi homojn estas malĝustE.
Then the subject is a verb, the predicative is an adverb.

Or, to be more gerund-like, one could say "Manĝado de homoj estas malĝusta".

Or to avoid the polysemic de one can say Manĝado homojn estas malĝusta, even if that may feel strange to some. Anyway there is no restriction in E-o for having a verb as a subject of a sentence, so manĝi homojn estas malĝuste is perhaps the simplest one.

Kiel esperantigi anglajn ing-formojn?

La deriva finaĵo –ing en la Angla havas du tute malsamajn funkciojn:
a) ĝi estas uzata por formi la participon de la nuntempo (present participle),
b) ĝi estas uzata por formi la gerundon (gerund).

Se esperantigenda ing-formo estas participo, oni povas esperantigi ĝin tiel:
1) participo: Don’t wake a sleeping dragon. → Ne veku dormantan drakon.
2) atributa subpropozicio: Don’t wake a sleeping dragon. → Ne veku drakon, kiu dormas.
3) moda subpropozicio: Don’t wake a sleeping dragon. → Ne veku drakon, kiam ĝi dormas.

Se esperantigenda ing-formo estas gerundo, oni povas esperantigi ĝin tiel:
1) infinitivo: Sleeping is necessary. → Dormi estas necese.
2) Ke-subpropozicio: Sleeping is necessary. → Estas necese ke oni dormas.
3) substantivo derivata el verbo: Sleeping is necessary. → Dorm(ad)o estas necesa.

La ekzemploj donitaj ĉe esperanto.50webs.com sub la titolo “3.8.6.2 Gerunds”, ne ĉiuj enhavas gerundojn:

esperanto.50webs.com :
Promentante ili kantas. – Walking, they are singing.
Reveninte hejmen, ŝi komencis legi. – Having came (sic!) home, she started to read.
Pagonte li foriris. – He left before paying.

Ĉi tie, “walking”, “singing” and “having come” ne estas gerundoj, sed participoj. Nur “paying” estas eble gerundo. Retejo pri Gramatiko, kiu ne konas la malsamecon inter participoj kaj gerundoj, kaj kiu donas ekzemple “having came” anstataux “having come”, eble ne estas fidinda.

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The long read:
English is the AFAIK the only germanic language which has a gerund. The term gerund comes from Latin gerundium and Latin itself and its offspring do have gerunds. The gerunds (gerundia) are inflected forms of an infinitive. In Latin all nouns are marked for case (nominative, genitive, dative, accusative, vocative, ablative, and sometimes locative). Thus, when an infinitive fills the syntactic slot of a noun, it must also be marked for case. This is where the gerund comes in. The nominative and accusative of a gerund are identical to the infinitive (in indoeuropean languages the nominative and the accusative of neutra are always the same), e.g.:

Dormire (NOM) necesse est. → Dormi estas necese.
Nolo dormire (AKK). → Mi ne volas dormi.

The rest of the cases is formed with –nd– and a case ending. An example with genitive:

Modus operandi (GEN). → a way of operating

After prepositions even the accusative changes:

Necessaria ad navegandum. → (things) necessary for navigating.

Back to the germanic languages:

Germanic languages generally have two nominal forms of the verb: infinitives and participles. There is no need for a gerund, as the infinitive can be inflected for case directly without the need of any derivational suffix.

LAT → GER
dormire = schlafen, das Schlafen
dormiendi = des Schlafens
dormiendo = dem Schlafen
etc

The present participle in Germanic languages is formed by the suffix –nd– and I think this where the whole confusion arises. Latin uses –nd– for gerunds and gerundives and –nt– for present participles, while Germanic languages use –nd– for present participles and have no gerund.

Now where do these –ing forms in English come from? Germanic language can derive from many but not all verbs a substantive with –ng–.

DE: überführen → Überführung
NO: overføre → overføring
SE: överföra → överföring

My (not very educated) guess is, that at some time in its development the English language took this ng-noun and used it to replace both the nd-participle and the infinitive in certain places. The latter gave rise to the English gerund. But this is just a theory.

Old English → modern English
to stelanne (infinitive) → to steal (infinitive)
stelan (infinitive) → stealing (gerund)
stelende (present participle with germanic –nd–) → stealing (participle)
gestolen (augmented past participle with ablaut) → stolen (unaugmented past participle with ablaut)