What Japanese Says With the Word Te

Why one word carries so much

In Japanese the hand stands for capacity. If your hands are full you have no capacity, if they are empty you are available, and if you put a hand out you have committed yourself to something. Almost every te phrase is a variation on that single picture, which is why the group holds together in memory when a flat vocabulary list does not. Learn the image once and the individual phrases stop looking arbitrary.

The grammar follows the image. Phrases built as te ga plus an intransitive predicate describe a state you are in and are not under your control: te ga aku, te ga tarinai, te ga mawaranai. Phrases built as te o plus a transitive verb describe something you choose to do: te o kasu, te o dasu, te o nuku, te o hiku. Knowing which half a phrase belongs to tells you at once whether you can promise it, apologise with it, or only report it.

A separate guide on kanyōku covers body-part idioms across the whole body, so this post stays with te and goes further into it than a survey can. Expect overlap on two or three famous phrases and new ground everywhere else.

The te phrases at a glance

Do not try to learn this table in one sitting. Read down the middle column first and let the images settle, then come back and pick the eight or nine that describe your own life. A phrase you have a real use for on Monday morning sticks; a phrase you admire in a table does not.

Availability: who is free and who is buried

This is the group you will hear most, because Japanese offices, kitchens and building sites all need a fast way to say whether a person can be interrupted. Te ga aku is the moment your hands empty, so te ga aitara means once I am free, and te ga aite imasu is the present state. Te ga hanasenai is its opposite and works as a complete, polite excuse: it says you are physically committed, not that you would rather not.

Te ga tarinai and hitode ga tarinai both mean short-handed, but hitode is a plain noun for staff and appears in writing and news, while te ga tarinai is spoken and immediate. Te ga mawaranai is different again: the hands exist but cannot reach everything, so use it when the problem is time rather than headcount.

Helping: lending, borrowing and the plain verb

Te o kasu is to lend a hand and te o kariru is to borrow one, so the direction is built into the verb and you never need to add an English-style preposition. Both are slightly figurative and warm. The plain verb tetsudau is the neutral workhorse and the humble otetsudai shimasu is the version you offer to a customer, a teacher or your partner's mother.

The mistake learners make is offering help with te o kasu to someone senior. Lending implies you are doing them a favour from a position of ease, which can sound casual upward. Otetsudai shimashō ka is the safe offer in any direction, and te o kashite itadakemasen ka is the safe way to ask for help from someone above you.

Obtaining and losing control

Te ni ireru and te ni hairu are a transitive and intransitive pair, and choosing the wrong one is the commonest error in this group. You put something into your hand, so kippu o te ni iremashita, but a thing comes into your hand by itself, so kippu ga te ni hairimashita. Use te ni hairu when talking about availability in shops and te ni ireru when you want to credit your own effort.

The opposite direction is control slipping. Te ni tsukanai says a task will not stick to your hands because your mind is elsewhere, and it takes the thing you cannot do as its subject: shigoto ga te ni tsukimasen. Te ni oenai says something is too big to carry, and te mo ashi mo denai is the stronger, more conversational version of being completely stuck.

Te o dasu and the phrases to recognise only

Te o dasu is genuinely useful and genuinely risky. With an activity or a field it means to take something on, often with a hint that you should not have: kabu ni te o dasu, atarashii bun'ya ni te o dasu. With an object it means to touch what is not yours. With a person as the target it can mean to hit them or to make a sexual advance, and the listener works out which from context, so a learner cannot control the reading. Keep it for activities and things, never for people.

Te ga hayai has the same problem in a smaller package. It can describe a fast worker, but the two better-known senses are quick to violence and quick to make advances, so it is a recognise-only phrase. When you mean somebody works fast, say shigoto ga hayai desu ne. Te o yaku, by contrast, is safe and very expressive: it means something or someone has genuinely worn you out, and it takes ni for the source of the trouble.

Tema and tesū: the vocabulary of trouble

Tema and tesū both measure effort, but they point in different directions. Tema is the effort a task costs, seen from the task: kono ryōri wa tema ga kakarimasu means the dish is laborious, with no blame attached to anyone. Tesū is trouble imposed on a person, so it appears with the humble o prefix whenever you are the one imposing it.

Tema takes kakaru for the cost and kakeru when a person spends it, and otema o torasete sumimasen apologises for eating someone's time. Tesū appears in the fixed noun tesūryō, the handling fee on a bank transfer or a ticket, which is worth learning as a word in its own right because it turns up on every counter and screen.

Otesū desu ga, the polite request opener

This is the single most useful item on the page. Otesū desu ga sits at the front of a request and means roughly it is a bother, but. It signals that you know you are adding work to someone's day, which is exactly the move Japanese politeness expects before an imperative, however softened. The stronger version otesū o okake shimasu ga is common in email and in careful speech.

The reply you will hear is usually a light dismissal: tondemonai desu, ie ie, or a straightforward shōchi shimashita if the person is accepting the task. Among friends the same opener sounds like a form letter, so swap it for warui kedo or chotto onegai ga aru n da kedo.

Speed, skill and cutting corners

Jōzu is written with the characters for upper and hand, and it is the ordinary word for skilful. It is worth noticing here because it shows the same metaphor working in a compound rather than a phrase, and because its partner nigate, the bitter hand, is how you say you are not good at something without the harshness of dekimasen. Te o nuku is the phrase for doing a job at less than full effort, and it is mild but clearly critical, so use it about yourself or about a task rather than about a colleague to their face.

Words where te has gone underground

A last group has the same character but no longer feels like a metaphor. Tetsuzuki is the word for any formal procedure, from a phone contract to a residence card renewal, and it is the noun you want at every counter. Tehai is making arrangements, tejun is the ordered steps of a process, temoto is what you have in front of you, and aite is the other party in any interaction, from a conversation partner to an opponent in a match. Katte ni means doing something without asking, and it usually carries mild criticism.

How to make these automatic

• Learn each phrase glued to its particle: te ga aku, te o kasu, te ni ireru. The particle is the memory hook, not decoration.
• Sort any new te phrase into state or action the moment you meet it, then you will know whether you can promise it.
• Keep te o dasu for activities and objects only, and never build a sentence with a person as its target.
• Put otesū desu ga in front of three requests you already make every week, and say them aloud until the opener arrives before the request does.
• Say te ni ireru and te ni hairu in a pair every time you practise, using the same noun, so the transitive and intransitive halves never blur.
• Replace one vague busy sentence a day with a precise one: instead of isogashii desu, choose te ga hanasemasen, te ga tarimasen or te ga mawarimasen.