Linking actions in order in Japanese

Level A2

Linking actions in order in Japanese

By the end of this lesson you can walk someone through a routine in Japanese: 朝ご飯を食べて、駅に行きます (asagohan o tabete, eki ni ikimasu), “I have breakfast and go to the station.” The central idea is this: the て form links actions in the order you say them, and only the last verb carries the tense and the politeness. それから (sorekara), “then”, opens the next step.

Quick review: three verbs and their て form

Three verbs carry this lesson: 食べる (taberu), “eat”, 飲む (nomu), “drink”, and 行く (iku), “go”. You may have met 食べて and 飲んで in requests like 飲んでください, and 行った when talking about the past. Compare the last two columns: た becomes て and だ becomes で, so 食べた gives 食べて, 飲んだ gives 飲んで and 行った gives 行って. 行って (itte) is the one to practice here: hold the double t for a moment. The table has no audio, but you'll hear all three て forms in the sentences that follow; the kana reading is in parentheses.

Dictionaryます formた formて form
食(た)べる（たべる）食べます（たべます）食べた（たべた）食べて（たべて）
飲(の)む（のむ）飲みます（のみます）飲んだ（のんだ）飲んで（のんで）
行(い)く（いく）行きます（いきます）行った（いった）行って（いって）

Three new words: それから, 朝ご飯 and 昼ご飯

それから (sorekara) means “then” or “after that”: it announces the next step. 朝ご飯 (asagohan) is breakfast and 昼ご飯 (hirugohan) is lunch. Both end in ご飯 (gohan), the word for cooked rice and for a meal.

  • それからthen
  • 朝(あさ)ご飯(はん)breakfast
  • 昼(ひる)ご飯(はん)lunch

Model: how the day goes

Listen once without reading. One person asks about the other's day, and the answers go step by step: breakfast, a café, lunch at the station, work at home. 食べて and 行って leave the sentence open, and the verb in ます closes it, as in 働きます (hatarakimasu), “I work”. Nobody says “I” or “you”: the questions make it clear who is meant.

Linking actions: 〜て、〜ます

Put the earlier action in the て form, add a comma and finish with the next action: パンを食べて、コーヒーを飲みます (pan o tabete, kōhī o nomimasu). を, に and で keep their usual jobs in each half. In these sentences the order of the words is the order of the events: 朝ご飯を食べて、カフェに行きます is breakfast first, and カフェに行って、朝ご飯を食べます is the café first. You can chain more than two actions, as in the last line. English “and” joins things and actions alike, but と, as in パンとコーヒー (pan to kōhī), “bread and coffee”, won't give you “and” between two actions: for that, use the て form.

〜て／〜で、〜ます

The next step: それから

て links steps inside one sentence, while それから usually opens a new sentence: 朝ご飯を食べます。それから、駅に行きます。 The full stop gives each step its own weight, which helps when a routine gets long. それから can also follow a て form to underline the order, as in コーヒーを飲んで、それから、働きます. You heard it in a question too: それから、どこに行きますか. The last line mixes both tools and adds clock times: 七時に (shichiji ni), “at seven”, and 八時に (hachiji ni), “at eight”.

〜ます。それから、〜ます

The last verb sets the tense

The て form has no tense of its own: 食べて can be “eat” or “ate”. Only the last verb shows whether it's past: 今日は…行きます isn't, 昨日は…行きました is. English marks both verbs, “I had breakfast and went”; Japanese marks just the end. Politeness works the same way: 行きました is polite, while plain 行った, the form friends use with each other, makes the whole sentence casual, and 食べて doesn't change. The third line is there to recognize; in this lesson you speak in ます.

Just to recognize: て doesn't always mean “then”

Order is the focus of this lesson, but it isn't the only thing て does. In 私はコーヒーを飲んで、友達はお茶を飲みます (watashi wa kōhī o nonde, tomodachi wa ocha o nomimasu), two people are set side by side, and neither action has to come first. The same form also appears in a request, ご飯を食べてください (gohan o tabete kudasai), and in an action going on now, 今、パンを食べています (ima, pan o tabete imasu): no sequence there either. So let what follows the て form tell you what it's doing. For now, you only need to recognize these lines.

Your turn, and a summary

A new colleague asks how your morning goes. Cover the lines below and say each step out loud before checking. First, in one sentence: you have breakfast, then some tea. Next, in one sentence: you go to the station and have a coffee at a café. Last, a new sentence with それから: you work.

In short: て form + comma + next action links steps in order; それから opens the next step; only the last verb carries the tense and the politeness.

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