The て form

Don't worry if this lesson seems hard. We're just covering fundamentals, you're not expected to internalize the ideas here yet.

There is a verb form that ends in て. This verb form is used in two main ways:

• to chain actions or statements together;
• to provide additional nuance to an action or statement.

The て form is made by replacing the past tense た with て. Keep in mind that this isn't some kind of secondary past tense. The て form does not encode any notion of “tense” in its form. It doesn’t tell us anything about the sentence being past or present.

殺して　切って　買って　死んで　食べて

Adjectives can also have a て form. This is done by turning the い into くて.

This also works for negative conjugations, which is also how we apply て form to negative verbs.

We saw “A is B” and “A does B” type of sentences. With the introduction of the て form we will see our first example of “A does B, and then D does C” type of sentences. At the very basic syntax level, AてB means “A happens, and then B”. It can mark either a temporal sequence, or a cause -> consequence relationship. It allows us to make longer sentences with multiple verbs in sequence. Note that the subject on both sides does not have to be the same.

察しがよくて助かる
It is a relief that you have good intuition. (lit. you have good intuition and that helps me)

Note: whether or not you use a comma after て does not matter. Commas in general have no grammatical role in Japanese, but they can make things easier to parse.

The statement 察しがよくて is followed by the statement 助かる. 助かる is not modifying よくて. Instead, the first statement is setting up the context for the second statement. It is common in Japanese to build an initial statement, followed by a て conjugation, and then an additional statement that describes your subjective feeling or emotion about that first statement. You feel relieved (助かる) because the other person has the quality of 察しがいい.

遅くなってすみません
I'm sorry for being late (lit. "I am late and I am sorry")

In the common collocation 〜てすみません, the part before the て shows the cause of the apology.

彼女の目を見て、頷いた  
I looked her in the eyes and I nodded

In this example, て just strings the statements together as a simple sequence of actions. As mentioned earlier, the て form does not provide any notion of past or present tense. The tense is instead conveyed by the last verb in the sequence. 頷いた is in past form, so we can assume that the entire statement is in past tense.

Sometimes the て form lets a verb act as a topic. In this way, it can look like a noun. It's not really a noun, it just looks like one in situations like this. In this usage it is often followed by the は particle.

腹が減っては戦はできない
It is impossible to go to war when you are hungry.

The て form of ない, なくて, often carries a "didn't X, so Y" nuance. But this is just a nuance. It's just one of the possible uses of it.

早く起きなくて仕事に遅れた  
I didn't get up early, and I was late for work. (reason)