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I've got this sentence: かれはすしをたべにいっている。

Why is たべ which is たべる followed after by に and then by another verb? Is this correct?

Apparently it means "He is going to eat the sushi."

chocolate
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Rommel Bagasina
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    I commend you for deciding to learn hiragana, you got this! Does this answer your question? What does しに行く mean? – jarmanso7 Aug 01 '23 at 10:13
  • For the ～行っている meaning "has gone (and hasn't returned yet)", see: https://japanese.stackexchange.com/a/53820/9831 (and maybe https://japanese.stackexchange.com/a/19418/9831 and https://japanese.stackexchange.com/a/3140/9831 彼は日本に行っている He has gone to Japan. (He went to Japan, and is still there.) ) – chocolate Aug 04 '23 at 02:18

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I recommend you read with kanji and copy-paste it into a dictionary. If you read in full romaji or kana some ambiguities will arise that will be especially confusing for a beginner.

Setting that aside.

kare wa sushi wo tabe ni itte iru
彼はすしを食べに行っている

食べに is the tricky part

食べ is a noun meaning "eating", it's 食べる in what's called masu stem 食べ(ます).

masu stem + に (destination particle) gives the meaning of "in order to".

So, "He went (somewhere) to eat sushi (and hasn't come back yet)".

0149234
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  • Is 食べ really a noun though? Certainly, you can say 勝ちに行く and 負けに行く, and I think 勝ち and 負け can be nouns, but there are two pitch patterns for 勝ちに, one for the noun (LHL), the other for the verb (HLL), I guess. 勝ちにこだわる uses LHL and 勝ちに行く usually uses HLL. 勝ち can be used with particles other than に, e.g. 勝ちを掴む, 勝ちが決まる, but how about 食べ? – Detaroit Aug 03 '23 at 11:44
  • Yeah, you are right. The definition of NOUN should be defined with more restrictions. There are a bunch of types of nouns in Japanese. 食べ can turn into 食べ物, but how about 勝ち? Moreover, I don't know a lot about pitch accent, but a difference in pitch may not necessarily mean that the word is different. I think of らしい as a hearsay or as "it seems like." I wouldn't argue they are a different word. I will make an edit, given that there are adverbial nouns, i will put 連用形 to be safe. – 0149234 Aug 03 '23 at 13:11
  • In general I think of 連用形 as a noun-like entity precisely because of this usage and the possibility in some cases to have a more rounded noun (勝ち). – 0149234 Aug 03 '23 at 13:13
  • Maybe 連用形 is sometimes more like participle than gerund. – Detaroit Aug 03 '23 at 13:54
  • @Detaroit I've been over this in previous answers on other questions, e.g. https://japanese.stackexchange.com/questions/100291/keigo-%e3%81%be%e3%81%99-after-a-noun/100297#100297, https://japanese.stackexchange.com/questions/100007/the-tense-of-osagashi/100039#100039. There are many attributes that a candidate for a "noun" could have; many sorts of word in Japanese have some but not all of them, in overlapping combinations. English basically just has nouns and gerunds; I find masu-stems to be quite analogous to English gerunds. It's only my own analysis, though. – Karl Knechtel Aug 04 '23 at 03:56
  • She fell asleep while reading a book. While is not a preposition and thus reading is not a gerund. I feel something similar about 食べ as a native speaker, but it's just my feeling. – Detaroit Aug 04 '23 at 05:46
  • If 食べ is nominal, then it should be 食べに{LHL}. That's how I feel. But actually it is 食べに{HLL}行く. – Detaroit Aug 04 '23 at 05:53