The -te form is a very important part of the Japanese language, playing a role in several grammatical structures. It's used for connecting two sentences. And it also plays a role in progressive tense and when asking for favors. 

How To Conjugate It

The chart below shows you how to conjugate verbs in the te-form. Find the character the verb ends in (be careful with る!), drop that character, and then add the ending to the end of the verb. Note the three irregular cases at the bottom of the chart.

Connecting sentences 

The -te form of a verb which does not have a tense or mood combines with other verb forms. It may be formed from the plain past tense by changing the ending -ta to -te. When the -te form is used to link two sentences where it may be translated as "and", the verb at the end of the sentence shows the overall tense of the sentence.

土曜日の朝に東京へ行ました。新しいスーツを買いました。
Doyoubi no asa ni Toukyou e ikimashita. Atarashii suutsu o kaimashita.
On Saturday morning I went to Tokyo. I bought a new suit.

土曜日の朝に東京へ行って、新しいスーツを買いました。
Doyoubi no asa ni Toukyou e itte, atarashii suutsu o kaimashita.
On Saturday morning I went to Tokyo, and bought a new suit.

Other uses

There are a couple of other uses of the -te form. Please look at the chapters containing these constructs.

• Progressive tense : -te iru
• Asking for permission : -te mou ii
• Asking for a favor : -te kudasai

The material on this page has been contributed by several people.   

A large part is taken from "Some Notes on Japanese Grammar" and published for your personal use, with the kind permission of Keith Smillie (http://www.cs.ualberta.ca/~smillie/)