勉強してた or 勉強した

どうも皆さん

I'm confused with 勉強してた or 勉強した. Which do I use? I'm confused with した studied、or してた I don't even know how to translate this one.

SO, I have two questions.
1) how do I translate してた／勉強してた。
2) I want to simply say I studied Japanese. Like say someone asked me how my day was, and I told them I studied Japanese... do I use 勉強してた or 勉強した

「今日は勉強してた」あるいは「今日は勉強した」、どっちのほうが使ってはいけないの？

and can someone explain why you would use which one (grammar behind it).

Bonus points, can use 学ぶ instead?「今日、私は日本語を学びました。」
or even 練習... 「今日は私、日本語を練習した／してました。」

していた、していました is the past continuous form: "was studying." してた is a colloquial contraction, the kind you would use in casual speech or text, but not in more formal applications.
した、しました is the past perfect form: "studied."

Which one is better depends on the context, as usual; it's a matter of how appropriate it is rather than how correct it is. If someone asks you what you were doing at a certain time, you might use していた... and if someone just asked you what you did today, you might use した... or more likely if I were listing off the things I did I would use a different structure to link multiple verbs, but would probably end in ~した, since all those actions are now complete.

学ぶ is more like "learned," so it's better to maybe use it for a specific grammar point? 今日は日本語を勉強して、命令形を学びました。or 新しい漢字をいっぱい学びました。

練習… again, maybe 日本語 is too broad a thing to practice, I would be more specific, like 漢字を練習しました。

I feel like it would be more appropriate to use 勉強していた if you studied pretty much all day long. If it was something you did for a short time した might be more appropriate.

However, keep in mind that I haven't actively used Japanese since the Great Recession. So I may be a bit rusty.

Mikawa Ossan said:

I feel like it would be more appropriate to use 勉強していた if you studied pretty much all day long. If it was something you did for a short time した might be more appropriate.

However, keep in mind that I haven't actively used Japanese since the Great Recession. So I may be a bit rusty.

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I think this is pretty similar to English.
What were you doing?
I was studying.

You can't assume the duration just from this snippet. For example maybe the question is what were you doing when I called? Maybe at that point in time I was studying. Or if the question is what were you doing yesterday then the implication maybe that you did it for most of the day as you said.

Mikawa Ossan said:

I feel like it would be more appropriate to use 勉強していた if you studied pretty much all day long. If it was something you did for a short time した might be more appropriate.

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Hmm yeah, although I still feel like the implied duration 一日中 is still hiding in that intention

Mikawa Ossan said:

However, keep in mind that I haven't actively used Japanese since the Great Recession. So I may be a bit rusty.

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Which one?

nice gaijin said:

Which one?

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LOL I think Hashimoto was PM then? Back in 2009.

Although last week I was in a hotel elevator in Cleveland, OH and got to say どうぞ to a Japanese couple (I assume since they were speaking Japanese) and gesture to them to leave the elevator first. That's the most Japanese I've spoken in years. Where does the time go?