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Tell me please what is the difference in meaning between the following sentences.

  1. I had an awful back pain yesterday, and honestly I have never experienced anything like that before.

  2. I had an awful back pain yesterday, and honestly I had never experienced anything like that before.

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Technically, the first sentence is a contradiction. It says first that you did experience the awful pain and then that no, you never have had it.

That kind of construction is often used colloquially, though.

The second sentence is grammatically and semantically acceptable. The phrase, "I had never experienced" means "as of the time under discussion," in other words, yesterday when the back pain struck.

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