I’ve been playing Pokemon Sun recently, and noticed the professor character occasionally uses て-form verbs in atypical ways. Most recently, it was during an explanation on how to use Z-Powers (basically Super Moves)- he began with しっかり みてるんだぜ, which I can understand is him saying “Look closely” or “Pay attention!”- but those would be みてください etc., right? Why is it みてる？
And then, right before he uses the move he says さあ みててごらん, which I would think would be more of a “Try to look” (it can go by quick if you aren’t paying attention) (みてごらん), but he has an extra て there. What gives?! Basically, I think I understand what he is saying, but I don’t know why he is saying it in that way!
Any insight or help would be super appreciated- I’ve already tried googling but my japanese google-fu doesn’t seem to be strong enough for this one.
When I was in Japan, living with a Japanese familiy, the only time I ever heard that phrase was from the homestay’s familly four year old. Always “お母さん見ててごらん”, and yeah, it was very child-like.
Often it was repeated with increasing levels of anxiety as mom was busy cooking or something and could not stop to look at a bug/drawing/Sentai pose.
Hey everyone, thanks for the help! As usual, it was way more obvious than it should have been and I just made it more complicated than it needed to be. Thanks!
待つ is a godan verb so the て-form is 待って
待て is an order, but maybe that is what you meant
I’m so sorry, I just now noticed that I completely botched that word, accidentally put the っ in the wrong place. 見っててて makes no sense, what I meant was 見ててって.
