～て (Sequence)And, And then, After that (sequence)

Structure

Verb［て］+ (Action) Phrase

Details

Part of Speech
Particle
Word Type
Conjunctive Particle
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Standard

About Verb + て+ B

The て form of a verb, followed by another verb phrase is often translated to 'then', or 'and then', and is how Japanese lists sequences of events that happen one after another.

Caution

This grammar construction is used for listing things that happen in order, for example 'I did (A), then (B), then (C)'. Other grammar structures will need to be used if you would like to talk about things that happen/happened in no particular order. For example たり～たりする, which will appear in a sentence like 'I did things like (C), and (A), oh, and (B)!'

Synonyms

Examples

--:--

晩(ばん)ご飯(はん)を食(た)べて歯(は)を磨(みが)いた。

I ate dinner and brushed my teeth.

ともこは鍵(かぎ)をかけて出(で)かけました。

Tomoko locked up the house and left.

明日(あした)は９時(くじ)に起(お)きて、朝(あさ)ごはんを食(た)べて買(か)い物(もの)に行(い)きます。

Tomorrow I will wake up at 9 (and), eat breakfast, and go shopping.

「東京(とうきょう)に行(い)って何(なに)をしたの？」

'What did you do after you went to Tokyo?'
（'You went to Tokyo, and then what did you do?')

ひとみさんのお母(かあ)さんに会(あ)って一緒(いっしょ)に戻(もど)りました。

I met Hitomi's mother, and we went back together.

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Online
- The conjunctive particle て
  Imabi
- Using て- Form as “and”
  PuniPuni
- Expressing a sequence of verbs with the te-form
  Tae Kim
- Making requests, linking sentences, & more
  Kanji Link
- Linking actions
  Tofugu

Offline
- Genki I 2nd Edition
  Page 152
- Tae Kim's Japanese Grammar Guide
  Page 105
- みんなの日本語 I
  Page 104 [CH 16]
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Verb + て+ B – Grammar Discussion

Most Recent Replies (11 in total)

additionalramen
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?
casual
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”.
additionalramen
This is helpful and interesting - thank you!