mantenint

Mantenint is the present participle (gerund) of the Catalan verb mantenir, meaning “to maintain” or “to keep.” It denotes ongoing or concurrent action and is used where English would express “maintaining” or “while maintaining.” The form is built from the stem manten- plus the gerund ending -int, and it corresponds to similar forms in other Romance languages, such as Spanish manteniendo and French en maintenant.

In Catalan, the gerund is used as an adverbial modifier and in periphrastic constructions to express how an action is performed or to indicate simultaneity. It is not a noun; the related noun for maintenance is manteniment. The gerund tends to appear in informal or narrative prose; in formal writing, some style guides discourage overuse of the gerund and prefer alternative constructions to avoid ambiguity.

Examples:

- Mantenint la calma, va respondre. (Keeping calm, he replied.)

- Va mantenint la qualitat del producte a mesura que s’amplia la producció. (He keeps maintaining the product quality as production expands.)

Compared with other languages, manteniendo in Spanish and en maintenant in French express a similar continuous sense of action. See also: manteniment, mantenir, Catalan grammar, gerund.