and
and then
after
Structure
- Verb[ て ] + Action/Event
Verb[て] conjugations
[This version of て is used to express a sequence of events]
[Verb[て] + B is often used with action verbs to express that actions have been taken in order. The verb in て-form happens first, and then the action/event (B)]
If you want to add that to “Readings”, it would be “Describing Two Activities” on page 152 of Genki I 2nd edition
@ferbeb Thank you! I have updated the Readings section and added this grammar point to the Genki I Path. Cheers!
Hi,
I have a question about this example sentence.
Would
きのうのあさはおきてなにをしたんですか
mean the same or is it either wrong or something different?
Thanks in advance
I would say it does. It changes from
" Yesterday (all day, any time during that day), after you woke up in the morning what did you do?" to " Yesterday morning (only this time, this is the topic, I don’t care about afternoon or evening, yesterday morning), what did you do after waking up? "
This is how I would interpret the difference
Thanks, that makes sense.
「うちに帰って昼寝をしたい。」（帰る）
‘I want to go home and take a nap.’
Should it be I want to return home?
What’s the difference between the lesson here and this earlier lesson?
At first glance, the earlier lesson details only shows sentences with a comma after て but when you look in the example sentences, it isn’t always the case.
I’m very new to this and I had the same question and came here to see if there was an answer. I saw there was no answer so I looked at the examples again. The version in lesson 5 seems to focus on how you add the conjunction particle to the verb. All of the examples are verb → verb + te. The version in lesson 7 seems to be focusing on how that functions by itself in a sentence.
I don’t know why they separated those ideas or put a couple of other ways the te particle functions with verbs before it, but I think that’s the difference.
If anyone else wants to clarify, expand, or explain, would love an answer.
The English translations of the example sentences for this grammar point are given in the past tense, but the て-forms of these verbs are not actually past tense in Japanese, right? Does the て-form just sort of …exist outside of time in Japanese? Or is thinking about it in terms of verb tense too English-centric?
Heh, you are completely right. In English and some other languages, when enumerating actions, you’d put each action independently into the past tense, e.g. “we went there and did that”.
But in Japanese, て form doesn’t get modified for the tense like that. You infer the time when things happened based on the sequence of events, the tense of the last action/event in the sequence, and any context words like “tomorrow”.
This is helpful and interesting - thank you!