Japanese Verbs – て (te) form
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 A verb in the て-form (te-form) ends in て or で and is used for making requests, connecting verbs together, and many other useful constructions. We saved this special verb conjugation for last, because on its own it really does not have a tense (present, past). In fact, it’s impossible to define exactly what the “te-form” does with one swift explanation because, well, it’s just that versatile. All we can do is to study it’s most common uses.
The て (te) form + いる (iru) is used to express ongoing actions.
We use ~ている (~te iru) to express an ongoing action. An example of this concept in English would be “I am running” and is often referred to as the present progressive tense. ~ている (~te iru) is also used to express a continuous action that has been ongoing up until the present time (“I have been running”). Below I will show you some examples in Japanese.
The て (te) form + いる (iru) is used to express habitual actions.
Think about the sentence “He smokes every day.” In English, that is the simple present tense we just used to express a habitual action. In Japanese however, we will use the same continuous tense as we used before to express an ongoing action. It’s as though we are saying “he is smoking every day”, if you want to get all literal about it.
The て (te) form is used to express a sequence of verbs.
We often use the て (te) form to connect verbs together in a sequence. It is similar to the way you would say “and” in English. Just remember to leave the last verb alone, as I’ll show you below.
The て (te) form + ください (kudasai) is used to make a request.
As we explained in this lesson, ~てください (~te kudasai) is used for requesting something and is similar to “please”. The te-form of the verb comes first, followed by ください.
て (te) form + もいいですか (mo ii desu ka) is used to ask permission.
In this lesson, we showed you how to ask for permission with ~てもいいですか (~te mo ii desu ka). Here are some examples as a refresher.
How to find the te-form of a verb.If the plain form of a verb ends with an iru/eru sound, drop the ru and add て.
If the plain form of a verb ends with a sound other than iru and eru, use the following chart:
We also have some irregular verbs to remember because they like to do their own thing:
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| Negative Casual Form, All tenses | Japanese Verbs Index |