When I was studying Japanese at TAFE, our teacher Masa-sensei taught us a silly song to remember how to produce the 〜て form of a verb, given its 〜ます stem or its dictionary form.
He told us that he designed the song to be sung to the tune of “Santa Claus is coming to town” so that every year at Christmas time we would hear the tune and be reminded of how to make 〜て form.
Well, it worked — even though that was more than 10 years ago, I still remember the song as it comes up to Christmas.
まさ先生、どうもありがとうございました 😁
〜て Form Song:
いちり-って、みびに-んで、
き-いて、ぎ-いで、
します-して、
きます-きて、いきます-いって。
うつる-って、むぶぬ-んで、
く-いて、ぐ-いで、
す.する-して、
くる-きて、いく-いって。
For group 2 verbs, you can easily convert, just taking off ‘ます’ from ます-form, and a て is what you put!
(back to first verse)
To find out more about the 〜て form of Japanese verbs, you can refer to Tae Kim’s Japanese Grammar Guide.