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Me and my friend were talking about death and the universe and ect. But I
tried to write:

> 瀬間は死でした。

He then corrected me by writing

> 瀬間は死んでいます。

I don't understand the ～んでいます at the end of the sentence. Also what's wrong
with what I originally said? My friend can't really give me a good answer to
why I should write the second one.
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2015-06-11T02:23:45.780
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2015-06-11T03:21:41.053
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question
grammar
What is んでいます and why use it?
Because what you're trying to say would require 死 to be used as a verb, and
the way your buddy put it as 死んでいます means "is in a dead state" or "is dead",
rather than "…died".

If you want to say "he IS dead" you would say かれは死んでいます。To say "he was dead."
you would say かれは死んでいた or 死んでいました。 You would never use でした for this because
you are dealing with a verb not an adjective.

Hard to explain, but maybe someone will have a better more succinct
explanation for you.
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2015-06-11T02:55:55.183
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2015-06-11T02:55:55.183
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「んでいます」 is not a single unit, you're splitting the word in the wrong place.

# How to break down 死んでいます

「死んで」 is the _-te_ form of 「死ぬ」. You then connect that to 「いる」 (or if you're
being polite, 「います」). Together, they form the _-te-iru_ form of 「死ぬ」: 「死んでいる」

# The _-te-iru_ form

The _-te-iru_ form of a verb has multiple meanings, and depending on the type
of verb, those meanings differ. In the case of 「死ぬ」 (which is a state-change
verb)...

> 死んでいる  
>  "is dead" (stative reading)  
>  "are dying" (iterative meaning) (like, multiple different things are dying)

So, 「瀬間は死んでいます。」 unambiguously means "瀬間 is dead.", given the understanding
that 「瀬間」 is a person's name (preventing the iterative meaning, since that
would be a singular subject). On the other hand, if 「瀬間」 were the name of a
species or something, then it'd likely be the iterative meaning.

# What you said

You said 「瀬間は死でした。」, which means something like "瀬間 was death." In your
sentence, 「でした」 is the polite past-tense copula, and 「死」 is the noun for
"death". I can't think of any time you'd want to say this outside of fiction.
That said, your sentence is at least grammatical.
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2015-06-11T03:21:41.053
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