How do I express "while" as in "While I go buying it for us, please wait here"?


I want to say that B does X while A does Y.

> While I go buying it for us, please wait here.

Two constructions come to my mind when I try to convey that two things happen
simultaneously. Either verbs in て form or ます-stem + ながら.

I don't know whether one of the two methods is more suitable to express what
is said in the sentence in question. Usually I've only seen ながら being used
when the verb refers to one and the same person. But only rarely do I see ながら
being used in my textbook at all. Here's one sentence with ながら out of my
textbook: 音楽を聴きながら食事します。

て-form occurs more frequently for such purposes, and it also often indicates
that an **event** happens while an action is being performed, like here:

> ジョギングをして怪我をしてしまった。

However, I think that also in these cases, the verbal expressions which were
linked this way always referred to the same subject.

In the sentence in question, the subject changes. Therefore I fear that simply
saying: "私は買って来てくれて、ここで待ってください。" could be ambiguous/prone to elicit
misunderstanding. I thought about using は as a contrastive marker here, but I
don't know whether that's legit here or not:

> 私は買って来てくれて、あなたはここで待ってください。

This becomes even more necessary if I drop the imperative. At least in my
opinion:

> "While I go buy it for us, it is okay to just wait here."  
>  私は買って来てくれて、(あなたは?)ここで待たなくてもいい。




You can use している間. Your example would be translated as
"私が買い物をしている間、ここで待って(い)てください".




You can use している間. Your example would be translated as
"私が買い物をしている間、ここで待って(い)てください".

