Yesterday in my reviews of ておく I was asked a question, that contained a grammar point, I haven’t had learned yet at that point, namely ていた.
The sentence was this one:
冷蔵庫で冷やしておいていたコーラを二つください。
I was asked to enter 冷やす in it’s ておく form. Since the sentence was in the past tense, I entered 冷やしておいた which promted a hint, that told me to enter something that implies that the cola “had been cooled” and is no longer being cooled, but stands somewhere else like on the counter.
I was completely at a loss. You see, the issue is, although I am quite fluent in english it is sometimes hard to juggle nuances and tenses in 3 languages around in my head. So I gave up and looked at the solution.
Now, that reviews shouldn’t contain grammar points one hasn’t learned yet should be obvious, but that’s not the reason for this post.
What I want to ask of you is, to give me a couple easy example sentences in japanese (with the english translation if possible) both with ていた and いた so I can really really start to see the exact difference in nuance between these two.
I’ve been asking the difference of this on hinative in two different ways, and 4 japanese people told me, that 冷やしておいていた is unnatural, and they’d just use 冷やしておいた, one japanese person was not sure if there even is a difference and that maybe the one with ていた was a slip of tongue, and one even said that 冷やしておいていた was grammatically wrong!
So I’m completely lost at this point. Unsure if there is a difference, what it exactly is and how to use it. I’d like some clarification, some examples or explanations if you may.
Thank you in advance.