I have read the grammar page of both ことだし and こととて. To me it seems both are having the same meaning (i.e. because), and when doing review it seems sometimes both can be used, but most of the time they are different. I have tried searching online and it seems there are no one talking about these. What is the difference between these 2?
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I think the key nuance is that こととて has a more negative use-case, used to blame something similar to せいで. Notably the following stands out:
“こととて will primarily be used when asking for forgiveness for something.”
Whereas ことだし is more happenstance with it’s uses. “Since” is used a lot in the translations of ことだし rather than “due to” for こととて, which is highlighting this difference. “Because” has a lot of generic use-cases in English so it’s not the most helpful translation because it loses a lot of nuance.