Past Form vs ～ている・～ていた

Introduction

In this lesson, we'll deal with three different conjugations that have some unique subtleties in Japanese, that they don't have in English. We're going to compare and contrast the simple past tense ～た with the present-continuous form ～ている and past-continuous form ～ていた. Sound fun? Awesome.

Past vs continuous vs past

Many learners of Japanese tend to become confused by how the continuous (ている) tense works, especially when dealing with its past tense variation. This is because, as I mentioned in the "知しる vs 分わかる" lesson, some actions that are considered continuous in English are instantaneous in Japanese, and vice versa. For instance, if we say someone "was coming to the party" in English, it means they were on their way or planning to come. But the past-continuous conjugation of the verb 来くる in Japanese can mean something totally different. Let's look at a scenario to start things off.