Last night I was going to fall asleep in the bed at around 11p.m. At that time, I was leaving my radio on. I was feeling like I was listening to the news at 11 o’clock, but I don’t remember what I heard from the radio speaker. Soon after the news program ended, the late-night program started at 11:05, which was “Rajio Shinyabin” on NHK AM. The male radio anchor started the program with mentioning there were a lot of words that ended with “te”. Since I was about to sleep, I don’t remember exactly what he said, but words with “te” were used to describe order of two actions, conditions while the action, and cause/reason. And he added that Japanese teachers were making much effort to teach those words with “te” with calling them “Tegata”.
I am not sure how many Japanese teachers were listening to NHK AM radio in late night at 11, but I am sure that almost all Japanese teacher who listened to it must have shouted “That’s ‘Tekei’!”
Perhaps the radio anchor was not saying what he thought himself, but reading what a broadcast writer wrote on paper. It seems like the writer researched well about “words with ‘te'”, because mentioning several functions of “te” like him was not what an ordinary Japanese could think of.
What is called “Te-form” by Japanese teachers and learners is written in Japanese as “テ形/て形/てけい”. Spelling is “てけい/Tekei”, but the pronunciation is “てけえ/Teke’e”. So for the word “て形” , the Kanji “形” is read as “けい/kei” which is one of On-pronunciations. If you read the Kanji “形” as “がた/gata”, it is one of Kun-pronunciations. Since a Kanji has several patterns of pronunciations of On- and Kun-pronunciations, it is difficult even for Japanese to use the right one. Actually there is a word “Tegata” in Japanese and it’s Kanji is “手形” which doesn’t has to do with Japanese grammar. Since the Kanji “形” is used for conjugation patterns like “終止形”,”連体形”, and “連用形”, and all these “形” is pronounced as “kei”.
Someone might have pointed out to NHK saying it’s not Tegata but Tekei. But I don’t know if the collection was aired in the program or not (the program continued until 5 a.m.!) because I soon turned off the radio, and fell asleep.
Agony or Fun?! Second Language Learning 