In this lesson you will get to learn an important topic in Japanese verbs, which is て-form + います (te-form + imasu).
て-form + います (te-form + imasu) is widely used in many Japanese sentences.
And because it has many functions many people get confused on its applications.
Most of the time you have to read from the actual sentence to understand the context and what does it means.
I will introduce 3 of them in this lesson:
You have already learned that past tense in Japanese verbs is used for events in the past which has already finished. For example...
The above sentence means the speaker has already finished watching TV, which occurred on last night. Now let's look at this sentence in present tense...
From the above sentence, you can see that present tense is also used for future event in Japanese, as there is no future tense in Japanese verbs.
So how do you going to describe the action that you are doing now? Yes, I think you should have known by now. Use て-form + います (te-form + imasu).
In the above example, the speaker has started to watch TV in the past, is watching now, and is continuing to watch to the future.
It's like adding the "ing" to the verb. The speaker is in the middle of the action of watching TV, as shown in the following diagram.
Let's make some sentences using te-form + imasu to show the action in progress in Japanese verbs...
Habitual action is used to describe the same action which is repeatedly performed over a period of time. And the action is still continuing.
The Japanese verb sentences which associated with habitual action always include words like まいあさ (maiasa - every morning), まいばん (maiban - every night), まいにち (mainichi - everyday), いつも (itsumo - always), etc. For example,
The presence of the words まいにち (mainichi - everyday) indicates this is a habitual action. However if you are saying the following instead...
The word いま (ima) indicates this is a action in progress, not habitual action.
One of the functions of te-form + imasu is to describe one's occupation. You can use any of the following when you want to talk about somebody's occupation...
Profession を しています - (I am Profession)
Place で はたらいています - (work at/in)
Place(Company's name) に つとめています - (work for)
In "Profession を しています", you can replace "Profession" with the type of occupation you want to talk about.
You use this Japanese verb sentence structure to describe somebody is working as some profession. For example...
In "Place で はたらいています", you are talking about the place where somebody is working. The "Place" here can be the country, the work place or the actual company name. Take note that the particle here is で (de).
In "Place(Company's name) に つとめています", you are giving the actual company's name where somebody is working for. In this case, the particle used here is に (ni).
In summary, these are the 3 basic functions for て-form + います (te-form + imasu) in Japanese verbs.
There are 2 Japanese verbs, いる (iru) and ある (aru), which cannot have te-form + imasu. Therefore there is no いています (ite imasu) and あっています (atte imasu).
Lesson 18: Verbs.
Lesson 19: Verbs Part 2 - Change dictionary-form to masu-form and nai-form.
Lesson 20: Verbs on give and receive.
Lesson 21: Verbs te-form.
Lesson 23: Verbs of Motion & How to Make Request in Japanese.
Lesson 29: Verbs on State Continuation.
Lesson 30: Verbs - Transitive and Intransitive verbs.
Lesson 31: Verbs on State Continuation Transitive/Intransitive.
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Previous - Lesson 21: Verbs te-form
Next - Lesson 23: Verbs of Motion
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