Jenny_Bleach wrote:It's a little embarassing that he was complimenting me on my Japanese and I didn't know what he had said
Not at all, mate! We've all been there. That said, it's always better to focus on what you
can understand rather than what you cannot. To
increase what you know rather than to
decrease what you don't. It may seem like a trivial difference, but you'll find that it can profoundly affect your outlook on things later down the line.
Javizy wrote:. . . 'shitte imasu' is the 'te iru' form of the verb 'shiru' which means 'to come to know, to find out'. 'te iru' indicates a resultative state (among other things), in this case similar to the English present perfective, so 'have come to know, have come to find out'; this is how the Japanese express the concept of knowing something. Where we say 'I know algebra', they say 'I have come to learn algebra'. You'll find countless concepts expressed very differently in Japanese, you're lucky to find any that are the same, it's what I find most difficult.
Welcome to the forum anyway. If you found this helpful, do me a small favour in return and start learning kana, I forget how bad romaji is sometimes
I've got a small bone to pick here, because there's another grammar that ties more closely to the meaning you wrote above, and while I understand what you wrote quite clearly, I feel it could be misleading for the masses confounded by ~te iru.
The other grammar I speak of is 'te kuru,' which emphasizes that one has "come to" a certain point, as in this case
shitte kita "came to know" or also
narete kimashita "got used to." It is also used in the physical sense such as
itte kimashita "went and came back," but whether physical or not, the expression of coming towards something is always present.
"te iru," however, has two functions and they are always present states:
The first one (and also how most students first learn it) is equivalent to the English progressive, such as "I'm talking/eating/driving/walking," an action is going on as you talk about it.
nihongo o benkyou shite imasu "I'm studying Japanese" and
hirugohan wo tabete imasu "I'm eating lunch."
The other is, as you said, the result of an action, but there is no "coming" involved in it. In order to understand this well, one needs to have a grasp on how some verbs in Japanese take place in a
moment, while others take place over a
span. Eating, for example, takes time. So does drinking, walking, etc. Marriage, on the other hand, is something done in a moment. So is death. So is, incidentally, the verb "to come." Since so many people get confused about this, I'll try to illustrate:
watashi wa tabemasu "I eat."
watashi wa tabete imasu "I am eating." (span-- te iru is progressive)
watashi wa tabemashita "I ate."
watashitachi wa kekkon shimasu "We will get married."
watashitachi wa kekkon shite imasu "We are married." (result of a moment-- te iru is
not progressive.)
watashitachi wa kekkon shimashita. "We got married."
watashi wa arukimasu. "I walk."
watashi wa aruite imasu. "I am walking." (span-- te iru is progressive)
watashi wa arukimashita "I walked."
Now for the one that trips people up, because they think "te iru" is always the progressive:
densha ga kimasu "The train will come."
densha ga kite imasu "The train is here. [it's might have been here for awhile]" (
Not progressive! The result of a momentary action!)
densha ga kimashita "The train came. [it is here or getting here now]."
Likewise
kanojo ga kiteimasu is not "she is coming" but in fact "she is here"! The same is true with
shiru.
hajimete shitta "I didn't know that!" or literally "I knew it for the first time [just now]." Again, the "knowing" is a momentary thing that just happened-- you just learned it, you only "knew" it just now. Thus, to say "I know" in the sense of already having learned it, you say
shitte imasu because the moment of learning is already past, and you want to express the result.
Hope that made sense!
*edit* cleaned up the ending a little bit.
).
