So I’ve run into a snag here with ている. Every explanation I’ve come across seems to be very wordy and complex making this harder to understand than what I feel it needs to be. For so long I’ve understood it to be used for present actions (-ing in English/present progressive tense), continuous states of things, and habitual patterns. All of which -ing can be used for in English, right?
First problem was during my lesson today, going through the dialogue segments in Quartet Book 1 Ch. 1 (p29). The sentence was 「あっ、でも入る時間が決まっているよ」 My teacher said that this meant “the entrance times have been decided”, where I saw it as “The entrance times are deciding”, which while sounding weird in English, fits the grammar that the Japanese has. She told me it was a past tense sentence, but if that was the case it should’ve been 決まった or 決まっていた?
I can see 「決まっている」 as being times that have been given the state of chosen, but if then it should be -ていた since the state has already been granted to the time, right? Or I also read it as “the entrance time is being decided”, in that there are no times yet available, as whatever authority figure decides these times is still decided which ones to have.
I Just. Don’t. Get. It. She and I were both getting frustrated, her because I wasn’t understanding the why behind the grammar, me because I didn’t understand why a present tense verb is past tense (as well as me being angry at how much im struggling suddenly)
I then went to Bunpro to see if I could gain any insight into this. I just found more confusion. For example, the sentence they have listed on the page is 「バスは今大阪に来ています」, and they translate it as “the bus is in Osaka now” with parenthesis stating “The bus has come to Osaka and is there now”. I read it as “The Bus is coming to Osaka now” 来ている=Coming. I dont understand how the folks at Bunpro got “the bus already came” (and not anymore cuz it’s here)…because that would be past tense. 来た(came)/来ている (had come)….right?
(Bunpro page cuz Reddit mobile isn’t letting me hyperlink: https://bunpro.jp/grammar_points/ている2 )
(The following turned out to be just a little vent session that i did not see coming. Sorry…feel free to read if you want).
I’ve turned to the Dictionary of Basic Japanese Grammer, which while didn’t make me any more confused, didn’t seem to answer any question i had. I thought I was doing good for the last year or so with progress, and then i started quartet in January and have been stuck on ch.1 ever since. 8 months of struggling to understand things I thought I knew, and getting stuck on grammar parts that I never covered in Genki (the sudden influx of highly casual speech in the dialogues for example), its like its +1-ing the textbook, which i get is a thing for flash cards, but for a text book to throw concepts out at you and not provide any explanation as to what they are? Frustrating. I’ve listened to the same 2 dialogue examples for months, and i still am having issues not understanding a word they are saying (tho i have it mostly memorized at this point d/t having to read the script in the back). Like now I don’t know what words they are saying, but i know “this part is where he says this…and then when his voice inflects upwards that means there at the third paragraph” or whatever. Not good for obtaining a skill, but without a script to follow with, I cannot make out words. I love this language and the sense of accomplishment it brings me, I am studying anywhere from 30min to 4 hours, 5 days/week. It’s one of my biggest hobbies, but the sluggish progress I’ve been making has become almost glacial in speed. It’s starting to bring me feelings of failure rather than enjoyment. Arg….
by Chicken-Inspector