In my studies, lately, I’ve been realizing how widely used the combination: verb (V) + 〜ている really is within the Japanese language. When I was younger, I mostly understood this combination to be a way to say phrases that end in “ing” (i.e. eat-ing, drink-ing… where the actual act is happening at that very moment… something short term,) without truly realizing that this combination is used for much more. These other meanings, however, are easily absorbed (indirectly) over time through common and set phrases… to the extent that it can be easy to gloss over the usefulness of this sort of grammatical combination.

Most recently, however, I’ve been amazed at just how common this V + 〜ている form is within Japanese. For example, if I want to say “I remember”, I would probably use something like 覚えている. Seeing and hearing the V + 〜ている combination is pretty common… but for some reason it has taken me many years to come to this realization: V + 〜ている can often be used for (relatively) long term purposes, as well as short term purposes…