I don’t really get the purpose of the te form. Anyone who can help?
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There’s a lot of uses for the て form. A lot of grammar points rely on it. It’s usually called the “continuative form”. You can use it to chain predicates (verbs, adjectives) to express doing multiple actions.
You can say the sky is blue and beautiful as そらは あおくて うつくしいです
You can say you went to the bank and came back as ぎんこうに いって きました
Then there’s grammar points that connect to the て form, like ておく, てしまう, てください
Reference:
http://www.guidetojapanese.org/learn/complete/progressive_tense
http://www.guidetojapanese.org/learn/grammar/teform
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てみる is also used with to say something like ‘try to do x’ where x is a verb conjugated in the て form. て form is also used to make commands such as saying ‘助けて！’ or ‘見て！’
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Since the dictionary form you learn to conjugate at first, without a te-form actually is future tense, you need 〜ている to indicate present tense as well.
Dictionary form can be both present and future depending on the context. It’s similar in English, even if the examples are different. In English, you can say, “I am going to the movies”, but not leave yet. In Japanese, you could also say 今行く to say you are leaving now. Totally natural.
Aye, ～ている is the stative form - the verb is currently being performed (or, for instantaneous verbs, has been performed).
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