A couple of days ago I tried to express "I can ..." where "..." was some some verb or verb phrase.
I used the ~て form of the ... verb followed by 出来ます but was told instead to change the form of the ... verb from ~います to ~えます.
So now it seems to me that both 出来る and ~えます can have similar functions. What is the real difference and how can I know which to use when?
potential form
tag really belonged here. By the way, I think I said "読んで出来ます" (I can read it). – hippietrail Feb 28 '14 at 5:58