The -te form is a very important part of the Japanese language, playing a role in several grammatical structures. It’s used for connecting two sentences. And it also plays a role in progressive tense and when asking for favors.
How To Conjugate It
The chart below shows you how to conjugate verbs in the te-form. Find the character the verb ends in (be careful with る!), drop that character, and then add the ending to the end of the verb. Note the three irregular cases at the bottom of the chart.
| る Verbs |
Ending | Example | te-form |
| る | て | たべる | たべて |
| うVerbs | Ending | Example | ｔe-form |
| う | って | うたう | うたって |
| つ | って | まつ | まって |
| る | って | わかる | わかって |
| む | んで | のむ | のんで |
| ぶ | んで | よぶ | よんで |
| ぬ | んで | しぬ | しんで |
| す | して | はなす | はなして |
| く | いて | はいやく | はいやいて |
| ぐ | いで | およぐ | およいで |
| Special Cases |
Verb | te-form | |
| する | して | ||
| くる | きて | ||
| いく | いって | ||
| Ending | Exam | te-form | |
| i-adjective | くて | やすい | やすくて |
| na-adjective | で | すてきな | すてきで |
Connecting sentences
The -te form of a verb which does not have a tense or mood combines with other verb forms. It may be formed from the plain past tense by changing the ending -ta to -te. When the -te form is used to link two sentences where it may be translated as “and”, the verb at the end of the sentence shows the overall tense of the sentence.
土曜日の朝に東京へ行ました。新しいスーツを買いました。
Doyoubi no asa ni Toukyou e ikimashita. Atarashii suutsu o kaimashita.
On Saturday morning I went to Tokyo. I bought a new suit.
土曜日の朝に東京へ行って、新しいスーツを買いました。
Doyoubi no asa ni Toukyou e itte, atarashii suutsu o kaimashita.
On Saturday morning I went to Tokyo, and bought a new suit.
Other uses
There are a couple of other uses of the -te form. Please look at the chapters containing these constructs.
The material on this page has been contributed by several people.
A large part is taken from “Some Notes on Japanese Grammar” and published for your personal use, with the kind permission of Keith Smillie (http://www.cs.ualberta.ca/~smillie/)
Related posts:
5:48 pm on March 22nd, 2011
so… when there are two or more verbs in one sentence, the first verb is used in -te form???
7:42 pm on February 20th, 2011
In the example, notice that when the two sentences were changed to one sentence, the final form “ikimashita” at the end of the first sentence changed to the te form, “itte”, instead (these are both forms of the verb iku, to go.
For more information and examples about this, see the following page at Tae Kim’s site:
http://www.guidetojapanese.org/learn/grammar/compound
7:18 pm on February 20th, 2011
I… I still dont understand how it’s used to connect sentences… I don’t get it.
10:34 am on October 29th, 2009
Yes. Thanks for catching this.
7:36 am on October 29th, 2009
Sorry, not row but column
7:15 am on October 29th, 2009
line: る|って|わかる|かって – last row should be わかって isn’t it?
9:33 pm on July 7th, 2009
First of all, you need to follow the links listed under “other uses” at the bottom of the page.
Also, there is a forum thread written by Shizu-san which teaches many of the uses of the te form. Here is the address of the thread: http://www.studyjapanese.org/forum/2-japanese-language/3692-te-form-lesson
The problem you are probably having is that you want one explanation or translation which will fit all of the different uses, and that simply doesn’t exist.
7:01 pm on July 7th, 2009
It’s still not clear to me how the -te form is used.
11:48 am on April 14th, 2009
Alynne-san, thanks for pointing out the typo. It should have been まって, not って, since all the verbs are being spelled in kana in this column; but your kanji spelling 待って is correct.
The original author of these notes was unfortunately not consistent about his names for the two main types of verbs– here he calls them る verbs and う verbs; in most places he calls them “group 1″ and “group 2″. The point is that verbs ending in -ru can be of either type, and they inflect differently depending on which type they are. I will add some text to this page and try to make this more clear.
4:38 pm on April 13th, 2009
is まつ not 待って？ it’s written just って。and what’ s the difference between the 2 るs?? ありがと….
2:38 pm on March 17th, 2009
teisei shimashita.
2:23 pm on March 17th, 2009
There are a mistake on ASKING FOR PERMESSION.
It’s writen – “moU ii”,but it should be -”mo ii”!