Tiptoeing into the participio presente

When you have spoken a language all your life (and are not a language nerd), there are certain things you just don't think about. 

When you learn a new language, certain things are tricky, such as, for example, the Italian way of skipping the pronoun when it's not essential. Italians don't have to think about it. The verb conjugation gives you the information you need. If you have studied Latin, that's not so strange. But if you come from English, it's a challenging concept to be able to grasp.

And then there are tenses. Not all languages think of tenses in the same way. For instance, English speakers might have trouble with il passato remoto because it doesn't exist in English as distinct from the simple past. And we might translate it the same way as we translate a different tense, such as the imperfetto or the passato prossimo.

This brings us to a tense or mood that is a bit strange to English speakers. We generally feel pretty familiar with the past participle of a verb that can be used either as part of a compound tense or as an adjective. It's used in a similar way in English.

È uscito dall'ospedale, però è ancora un po' confuso.

He's out of the hospital but he's still kind of confused.

Caption 41, Il Commissario Manara S2EP2 - L'addio di Lara - Part 7

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No, m'hanno licenziato loro, perché ho confuso il mangime delle anguille con il veleno per topi.

No, they fired me, because I mistook rat poison for eel feed.

Captions 51-52, Sei mai stata sulla Luna? film - Part 19

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The present participle is something else altogether. Most of the time, we will see the participio presente (which has the -ante or -ente ending) used as an adjective or a noun. We don't think about it much because the word has entered general usage as an adjective or noun. We can identify it as a participio presente because we can replace it with che and the conjugated verb form to reach the same meaning.

Let's look at a couple of words in this category.

A present participle functioning as an adjective:

interessante (che interessa) - interesting (that interests)

promettente (che promette) - promising (that promises)

Perché un suo abitante, Martino Piccione, giovane chitarrista promettente, è sparito nel nulla senza lasciare traccia.

Because one of its inhabitants, Martino Piccione — young, promising guitarist — has vanished into thin air, without leaving a trace.

Captions 4-6, Chi m'ha visto film - Part 15

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Note that in English, these adjectives often have the -ing ending. 

A present participle functioning as a noun:

il cantante ([la persona] che canta]) - the singer ([the person] who sings)

la sorgente (che sorge) - the source

l'abitante (che abita) - the inhabitant (the person who inhabits)

The tricky thing is that the -ing ending in English is also used to translate Italian words that have an -ando or -endo ending. These endings have to do with the presente progressivo (the present continuous or progressive).

Here's the example that prompted one of our viewers to ask about this:

Possiamo trovare il cerro, che è l'albero dominante il bosco,

We can find the turkey oak, which is the tree prevailing over the forest,

Caption 47, In giro per l'Italia La Valle del Sorbo

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We could say che è l'albero che domina il bosco.

Hopefully, you get the idea. You don't need to dwell on this, as you will get along fine without using the present participle as a verb most of the time. But when we come across it in a video, we need to know how to translate it (it was tricky!) and some people are just plain curious!