Being a student on italki, I love learning new things One small correction by the way. Don’t fidget it’s ‘so many cases’, not so much. It’s plural so we use many Maybe you can start practicing using gerunds as nouns too. I love swimming sessions. Is this drinking water? Etc

2. Gerunds and participles are two grammatically distinct things that have no overlap as the "being" examples illustrates. Note that "participle" has two usages: 1) the verb forms present participle (being, going) and past participle (born, gone), and 2) a "participle clause or phrase". Participle clause is a very useful and versatile way to construct an adverbial clause. Using your example sentence, * The children playing in the park are screaming loudly. Here "playing" is a present participle (modifying "the children") in the noun clause "the children (that are) playing in the park", and the noun clause serves as the subject of the sentence. Participles often creates an adjectival phrase like this usually coming after the noun they modify (e.g. "people suffering from pneumonia", "infants born last year"). But these phrases are NOT participle clauses. * Playing in the park, the children were screaming loudly. "playing in the park" is a participle phrase. The key difference is the clause is (usually but not always) separated from the main one, and it can take the subject from the main one (although it can sometimes have its own separate subject too - there are "same subject" and "different subject" participle clauses), and finally it has a simplified tense expressions. In this example, the clause is separated by a comma, and takes the subject "the children" from the main clause, and indicates the same tense as the main one. Tense can be the same ("same tense" participle clause - "playing") or back-shifted ("perfected participle" clause - "having played"). A participle clause/phrase is particularly useful in that it is shorter because it does without a conjunction (no "as", "while", etc) and has a simplified tense expression. They "participate" in the sentence by adding exactly what the speaker needs to express.

1. "being" is used as a gerund or present participle. As for "why" you mentioned, "being" has some unique usages (like other gerunds or participles) that cannot be replaced by others. Here's a couple of examples. (Gerund example) * Happiness is being a grandma. "being" is used as a gerund to create the noun phrase "being a grandma" which acts as a complement for the verb "is". If "being" was a present participle, the meaning would be like "happiness" is becoming a grandma (as if "happiness" is human) which makes no sense. You might also say "Happiness is *in* being a grandma", but it is difficult to express the idea without the gerund "being". "Happiness is to be a grandma" is somewhat similar but it has the nuance of becoming a grandma for the first time which is a little different from "the state of being one" as expressed by "being a grandma". ((Present) Participle example) * He is just being funny. This might be said if the person acts funnier than they usually are. "He is funny" means he is a funny person by nature, whereas "He is *being* funny" means he is funny in that particular moment, and probably more than he usually is. The two phrases mean quite different things and can't be easily expressed without the present participle "being". Present participles indicate an action or state that is ongoing at the given time.

We use the gerund a lot in English as part of the "continuous present" tense. Instead of saying "I go to the store" to mean that you are actually on your way, we say "I am going to the store". In French and Spanish they would say "I read a book" to mean "I am reading a book (at this moment)." There isn't always an easy way to know which one to use, I think that you just should talk as much as you can to native English speakers.

Oh also- it's not natural to say "I really fall in love with gerunds". Ironically you can say "I am really falling in love with gerunds", or say "I have really fallen in love with gerunds".