I seem to have somehow skipped this in my studies and it seems crucially important.

My understanding is roughly tekuru is up untill now and teiku is from present into the future.

However, is someone able to explain the differences clearly so I can go from vaguely understanding to having a comprehensive understanding please?!

Teiku and tekuru are often, but not always, related to going and coming (respectively). You are essentially doing the main verb before going or coming:

弁当を持って行きます. Bento wo motteikimasu
I will go with a bento (I'll take a bento with me)

コンピューターを買ってきます conpyuta wo kattekimasu
I'll buy a computer and then come back (I'm off to buy a computer)

いってきます ittekimasu
I'll go then I'll come back. (I'm off, see you later!)

朝食を食べて行きます choushoku wo tabeteikimasu
I'll go after I've have eaten breakfast

There are MANY other uses that you just have to learn on a case by case basis where it's not obvious why they use teiku or teikuru such as

最近暑くなってきたですね saikin atsukunattekita desu ne
It's gotten cold recently hasn't it.

I'm sure someone far smarter than me can fill in all the blanks ^^

squarezebra Wrote:There are MANY other uses that you just have to learn on a case by case basis where it's not obvious why they use teiku or teikuru such as

最近暑くなってきたですね saikin atsukunattekita desu ne
It's gotten cold recently hasn't it.

I'm sure someone far smarter than me can fill in all the blanks ^^

For me, it looks like that one is kuru because it's past tense, and you're talking about how hot it's been up 'til now, you don't really 100% know what the future will be so you'd use kuru...

ktcgx Wrote:

squarezebra Wrote:There are MANY other uses that you just have to learn on a case by case basis where it's not obvious why they use teiku or teikuru such as

最近暑くなってきたですね saikin atsukunattekita desu ne
It's gotten cold recently hasn't it.

I'm sure someone far smarter than me can fill in all the blanks ^^

For me, it looks like that one is kuru because it's past tense, and you're talking about how hot it's been up 'til now, you don't really 100% know what the future will be so you'd use kuru...

I'm not sure what you're trying to say, if you are agreeing or disagreeing with the usage of kita instead of kuru.
I think きた is certainly accurate; The heat has come or was brought on by mother nature (I think the translation meant to say hot, not cold ).

Hot lol, just a mistake on my part. Sooory

If you were to say that it's getting hotter then you'd use iku:

最近暑くなっていきますね
It seems to be getting hotter these days doesn't it

I know this is relatively old, but I just remembered this thread after finding this:

http://phiz.c.u-tokyo.ac.jp/~yk/papers/k...salt20.pdf

just take the literal meaning and solidify your understanding with context/immersion in japanese.

kuru = COME CAME ETC
IKU = GO, WILL BECOME ETC

it's not that complicated. p.s. if you're unsure if something should one or the other just google with quotes and if nobody's using either it's wrong or they're both right one's just usdd more than the other.

^ I agree with this to some extent, howtwo, like with flexible vocabulary, but I think some other things are too complicated to leave in the hands of immersion/repeated exposure. At least for adult learners of Japanese. It seems to get sooo much more unintuitive and almost impossible to understand the roles of tense/aspect markers and grammar points without investing a lot of time reading explanations in English, because they're intimately tied to semantics on a phrase/clause level. We can't afford to learn them through exposure b/c we have other language(s) that interfere lexically with the acquisition process.

I guess what I'm saying is that it would be nice to learn how Japanese interpret -te iku
and -te kuru in a way that doesn't segregate each interpretation and leave a lot of guesswork involved, but gives a thorough overview of their functions. so when they do show up in real Japanese, that knowledge can be made more intuitive, i.e. as obvious and implicit as it is to Japanese. The trade-off is reading a bunch of English beforehand lol. Only one way to find out if I'm onto something, though. I don't have results to back it up yet.