～ている

RuleVerb te-form + iru: an ongoing action, or a continuing resulting state.

Curiosity

Japanese has no separate present-continuous tense like English "-ing". So how do you tell "I eat" apart from "I am eating"?

Intuition

Think of the te-form as hooking the action onto iru ("to exist"), a still-live helper verb. The action hangs on iru and is "in existence", ongoing.

Visualization

taberu (dictionary) → tabete (te-form) → tabete iru. Tap each step to follow the transformation.

食べるdictionary form

Essence

tete iru carries two senses: ongoing action ("am doing now") and a continuing resulting state ("is in the state of"). shitte iru ("know") and kekkon shite iru ("be married") are the latter. Context decides.

Examples

今、ご飯を食べています。

I am eating now.

窓が開いています。

The window is open.

田中さんを知っています。

I know Mr. Tanaka.

Mini-quiz

"kare wa ima, hon o ___." (He is reading a book now)