Te form (Tabete) vs (Tabemasu) vs (Taberu)

Hajimemashite everyone! Can some help me to differentiate between the Te form of Tabe, vs Taberu vs Tabemasu? Arigato!

Taberu is the dictionary (and casual) form of “to eat”. You'd use it with family and close friends. It's a ru verb, meaning that to find the stem you just remove the ru, letting you create new forms of it by adding a new ending to the stem.  

Ringo o taberu = “I'll eat an apple.” / “I eat apples.”  

Tabemasu is just the polite version of this, and you'd use it with anyone you're not especially close with.      

Tabete is the te-form, which has multiple uses but is often used to allow connecting to another verb. For instance if you connect tabete to the existence verb iru (or polite imasu), you can say you're existing in a state of “to eat”… you are eating.  

Tabete imasu = “I am eating.”

Mata aimashita ne! Sugoi! Arigato…

こんにちは (Konnichiwa) Heru-,

EarleyGrave's explanation for this one was perfect!

- 食べる (taberu) “to eat” is known as the dictionary form or the plain form. When this is used to end a sentence it is casual so it should only be used with close friends and family.

- 食べます (tabemasu) “eat” is the polite form. Since this is polite, it can be used to talk to a variety of people like strangers, teachers, or work colleagues. When a polite form like 食べます (tabemasu) “eat” is used to end the sentence, it makes the sentence polite overall. 

You can learn more about the difference between the plain form and the polite form in this lesson:

https://app.rocketlanguages.com/members/products/5/lesson/5172#top

- 食べて (tabete) “eat” is the て (te) form. The  て (te) form is used in a variety of grammar constructions. Most commonly, it's used to connect two verbs and literally means “eat and.” For example the verb 寝る (neru) means “to sleep”; when we add this after 食べて (tabete) “eat," we get 食べて寝る (tabete neru) “eat and sleep" - or, more naturally, “eat and (then) sleep.” 

Here are a few lessons on how the て (te) form is used:

https://app.rocketlanguages.com/members/products/5/lesson/5138#top

https://app.rocketlanguages.com/members/products/22/lesson/5241#the-%E3%80%9C%E3%81%A6-form

I hope this helped!

勉強を頑張ってください！ (Benkyō o ganbatte kudasai!)