ももたろうはたくさん食べて、あっという間に大きくなりました。元気で、強くて、よく親こうこうをしました。
Why is there de after 元気 and 強い? Why do they both need a connection thing, isn’t that like saying “and” twice? Cause I thought the kute would be connecting to 元気 but then isn’t that what the de is doing or is the くて connecting to the bit after?
Japanese like to chain things.
Verbs use the so called “te form”; nouns use で (the te form of だ/です）、and adjectives change い to くて.
桃太郎 was healthy, strong and regularly practiced filial piety.
It could be written, with same meaning, as:
元気でした。強かった。よくおやこうこうをしました。
But stylistically it isn’t very pretty.
Tooo looong chaining isn’t pleasant either. Note how the writer choose not to write 大きくなって.
There isn’t any clear cut meaning to that chaining.
Sometimes it is just juxtaposition (“and”), sometimes it implies some cause+effect relationship, sometimes it is how helper verbs connect.
Context is key.
(Here, the choice of the writer to put comas, clearly points to an enumeration, but it isn’t mandatory at all to write a coma).
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It sounds like your thought process went
- で and て are like “and” in English
- using “and” multiple times in a row in English is frowned upon
- Therefore, wouldn’t using で or て multiple times in a row be frowned upon
It can be helpful to compare things in Japanese to other languages, since we all need some footholds to get started. But, generally speaking, these kinds of comparisons are superficial and don’t extend to the full rules that would be associated with both languages. The first assumption to make should be that the rules are different in one or more ways.
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