English Language Learners Stack Exchange is a question and answer site for speakers of other languages learning English. It only takes a minute to sign up.
Sign up to join this community
Which is correct:
We didn't play football yesterday. The match was canceled/had been canceled.
I think was canceled is correct, but the second? - I'm confused. Maybe firstly the match was canceled and then we didn't play. If so, then the second is correct. I would like to know how the native speakers think which is right.
If you use the past perfect you are always relating the event to some later temporal focus. This temporal focus may be explicit or implicit; it may be another event you are talking about, or a time that you want to look back from, but there is some later time.
If you say "The match had been cancelled", you are looking back at the cancellation from some later time - perhaps the end of the school day, or maybe in the evening. This is perfectly grammatical, and meaningful; but if there is no context which suggests when the time is that you are choosing to look back from, and why you are making that choice, then the hearer/reader may be puzzled as to why you made that choice.
You say:
The match was cancelled.
Yesterday: The match had been cancelled by the school because it rained.
The school knew it was going to rain due to the weather forecast.
match cancellation occurred before the rain.
That's the rule for this kind of thing.
Past tense is much easier, in my opinion. Past tense is basically what happened before something happened but past perfect tense is basically something that happens before something happens and something happens again.
