The て form

The て form is the single most useful thing in beginner Japanese, and it is the only piece of the grammar that asks you to memorise a table. Almost everything ahead of you is built on it: requests, actions in progress, permission, prohibition, sequences of events. It has no tense and no politeness of its own, which is exactly why it can sit under all of that. Get it now, drill it until it is automatic, and the next four lessons cost you almost nothing.

Three groups

Every Japanese verb belongs to one of three groups, and the て form rule depends on which. You need to be able to sort a verb before you can conjugate it.

Group 2 is the easy one to spot. Its ます form ends in えます or います where the sound before ます is an え or い sound belonging to the stem: 食たべます, 見みます, 起おきます, 寝ねます, 教おしえます. The て form is the stem plus て, with nothing else to think about.

Group 3 contains exactly two verbs, します and 来きます, and they are irregular. Their て forms are して and 来きて.

Group 1 is everything else, and it is where the work is. Its て form depends on the last kana of the stem, the kana sitting immediately before ます.

The group 1 rules

Five rows, and they cover every group 1 verb in the language. Say them aloud in that order until the sequence itself is memorable. Many learners chant the い, ち, り row first, because it is the largest.

Working through some real ones, stem by stem:

買かいます, stem 買かい, ends in い, so って: 買かって. 待まちます, stem 待まち, ends in ち, so って: 待まって. 帰かえります, stem 帰かえり, ends in り, so って: 帰かえって. 読よみます, stem 読よみ, ends in み, so んで: 読よんで. 遊あそびます, stem 遊あそび, ends in び, so んで: 遊あそんで. 聞ききます, stem 聞きき, ends in き, so いて: 聞きいて.

There is exactly one exception in the whole of group 1. 行いきます, to go, ends in き but does not take いて. Its て form is 行いって, following the って row instead. That single word is the only thing in this lesson you have to learn as a special case, and it is common enough that you will not forget it.

Sorting a verb into its group

This is where most of the difficulty actually lies, because the rules only work if you have identified the group correctly. Two tests do almost all the work.

If the sound before ます is an え sound, it is group 2 with no exceptions: 食たべます, 教おしえます, 寝ねます.

If the sound before ます is an い sound, and that is most verbs, it could be either. 見みます and 起おきます are group 2; 買かいます, 帰かえります and 聞ききます are group 1. There is no rule that separates them, so learn the group along with the verb, exactly as you learn its particle. 帰かえります is the classic trap: it looks like a group 2 verb to many beginners, but it is firmly group 1, which is why it becomes 帰かえって and not 帰かえりて.

Linking actions with て

The first use of the て form, and the one that tells you what it really is, is joining verbs. Put a verb in its て form and the sentence keeps going. Only the final verb carries tense and politeness, and it decides for all of them.

朝あさごはんを食たべて、学校がっこうに行いきます asagohan o tabete, gakkou ni ikimasu I eat breakfast and go to school

本ほんを買かって、家いえに帰かえりました hon o katte, ie ni kaerimashita I bought a book and went home

音楽おんがくを聞きいて、勉強べんきょうをします ongaku o kiite, benkyou o shimasu I listen to music and study

Look at the second one. Nothing in 買かって says the buying happened in the past. 帰かえりました says it, and the て form takes its tense from there. This is the whole logic of the form: it is a verb with the tense removed so that something else can supply it.

The order is not free. Actions come in the order they happened, always, and Japanese has no way of saying "I went home after buying a book" using this structure with the clauses reversed.

て as "and so"

The same construction often carries a light sense of cause, in the way English "and" sometimes does. Nothing in the grammar changes; only the reading of it.

お金かねがなくて、買かいませんでした okane ga nakute, kaimasen deshita I had no money, so I did not buy it

映画えいがを見みて、泣なきました eiga o mite, nakimashita I watched the film and cried

Adjectives join in the same way, using the くて and で forms from the last lesson, which is not a coincidence. くて is the て form of an adjective, and the two constructions are the same construction.

What learners get wrong

The first mistake is conjugating from the dictionary form when you only know the ます form, or the reverse. Work from the ます form for now: take ます off, look at the last kana of what remains, and apply the row.

The second is forgetting that the group 1 rules depend on that final kana and nothing else. Learners who half-remember the table apply いて to everything, and 飲のみて and 買かきて come out. The final kana of the stem is the only thing that decides. み takes んで because the sound before it is a nasal; き takes いて; there is no verb-by-verb memorisation to do once the group is known.

The third is voicing the wrong ending. んで is voiced and って is not, and swapping them gives you 飲のんて or 買かっで, both of which are unpronounceable to a Japanese ear. Keep the pairs together: ん always with で, っ always with て.

The fourth is treating 行いきます as regular. It is 行いって, not 行いいて.

Drilling it

Do not read this lesson and move on. Take ten verbs you know, write their ます forms in a column, and produce the て form of each without looking. Then check. A learner who can do the whole list in under a minute has cleared the largest single obstacle in beginner Japanese, and everything from lesson thirteen onward becomes a matter of adding one word to a form you can already build.

Vocabulary

Five rows, two irregular verbs and one exception are the entire て form. The next lesson spends all of it, adding ください for requests and います for actions in progress, and after that the form simply keeps paying out.