Te-Form (Coughing Baby)

The te-form is used as a conjunction to connect two sentences or clauses, an auxillary verb (e.g. to change a verb into "-ing" form) or a gentle instruction. This is already more uses than I expected when I started writing this as I used the て-form of まかせて and する and neither of those made much sense so hopefully we will be able to identify those later on. In English this concept is the "present-progressive". Because Japanese doesn't have a real future tense it is also useful as it can be used to indicate you are doing something right now rather than planning on doing it in the future. It can also be used to do the equivalent of the English "perfect-progressive tense" where you emphasise doing something continually. It can also be applied to nouns and adjectives too.

How to formate (form a "te" get it)

There are two* (*not really but these are the main ones) types of verbs - Godan Verbs which end in a character from the hiragana う-line and Ichidan verbs which all end in る. This may be expanded upon one day as some Godan verbs end in る. There are also two types of adjectives that end in い and な.

る-verbs you swap the る for て:

  • 食べる(taberu) to 食べて(tabete) (eat)
  • 起きる(okiru) to 起きて(okite) (get up/rise)
  • 閉じる(tojiru) to 閉じて(tojite) (close)

う-verbs there is a helpful chart for all the options for endings:

  • う, つ or る = って (e.g. 会う (meet) to 会って)
  • ぬ,ぶ or む = んで (e.g. 死ぬ (die) to 死んで)
  • す = して (e.g. 話す (speak) to 話して)
  • く= いて (e.g. きく (listen) to きいて)
  • ぐ = いで (e.g. 泳ぐ (swim) to 泳いで)

You can do similar things to the previous section with this.

There are also some verbs where they end with the other types but they don't go the same way for some reason:

  • 行く(to go) becomes 行って
  • 来る (to come) becomes 来て
  • する becomes して (reference to the other post!)

い-adjectives replace い with くて

  • 甘い (sweet) to 甘くて
  • おいしい (tasty) to おいしくて

な-adjectives (these are adjectives that when used in front of a noun require な and do not end in い apart from when they do) add a で

  • 静か (quiet) to 静かで
  • きれい (clean) to きれいで

Uses

Combining with other words to mean different things:

  • 食べている = Tabeteiru (I am eating)

This is a combination of taberu and iru - an auxillary verb meaning "to be"

  • 起きておく = Okiteoku (wake up in advance)

This is a combination of okiru and and oku - an auxillary verb meaning "to do something for future convenience". This one doesn't really work on it's own unless it is being used for what I talk about in the next section.

  • 起きておいて, 食べておく = Okiteoku, Tabeteoku (I wake up in advance and eat in advance)

This one combines the two verbs and so it actually has 3 て's in, one to te-form okite and oku, one to te-form taberu and okuand then you turn okiteoku to te-form by replacing くwith いて.

  • 速く食べている = Hayaku, tabeteiru (I am eating quickly)

This one combines the verb with an adverb, with the adverb first and the te-form verb second.

  • このケーキは甘くておいしい (This cake is sweet and tasty)

This uses the te-form of the adjective to use two adjectives for one subject.

  • このカフェは静かで好きです (This cafe is quiet so I like it/I like this cafe because it is quiet)

This one is using the te-form to connect two clauses by indicating one is the cause/reason.

As well as using the te form to connect clauses it can also be used to issue a gentle instruction, for example 食べて can also mean "eat (instruction)", and can be combined with ください (please) to make this more polite.