mottemasu or motteimasu?

[Philip Martin]

Have been reading this newsgroup for a couple of months but this is my first
post.

What is the difference between the following two forms?

持っています (motteimasu) and 持ってます (mottemasu) - I am
carrying,holiding, etc

住んでいます (sundeimasu) and 住んでます (sundemasu) - I am living

etc, etc

I've been told that the latter (just -masu, or -ru after the -te form) is
incorrect, maybe just in the context I was using it, although I am pretty
sure I have seen it in print.

If anyone could help I'd be jolly grateful.

Cheer, Phil

[Michael Khan]

Philip Martin wrote:

> What is the difference between the following two forms?
>
> 持っています (motteimasu) and 持ってます (mottemasu) - I am
> carrying,holiding, etc
>
> 住んでいます (sundeimasu) and 住んでます (sundemasu) - I am living

sunde'masu, motte'masu, itte'masu etc. instead of xxxx imasu and the
equivalent sunde'ru, motte'ru, itte'ru etc instead of xxxx iru are
contractions used in (mostly colloquial) speech.

[Philip Martin]

Thanks, I probably saw the shorter form written down on some subtitles or
some other representation of the spoken language.
That's why it was marked down as wrong when I used it in a short essay.

Michael Khan <"Michael Khan"@t-online.de> wrote in message
news:3BE80BA6...@t-online.de...

[Sean Holland]

in article 9s9cd4$lqi$1...@news6.svr.pol.co.uk, Philip Martin at
phi...@kkjc8307.academics.co.uk wrote on 11/5/01 11:00 AM:

> Thanks, I probably saw the shorter form written down on some subtitles or
> some other representation of the spoken language.
> That's why it was marked down as wrong when I used it in a short essay.
>

Don't feel bad. I've often seen teenage Japanese native speakers do the
same thing in compositions when they should be writing more formally.