Question about past tense

[l3in8]

Hi all,
はじめまして！
I am very confused with the past tense.
What is the difference between

彼女は日本に行きました.
彼女は日本に行ってました.

Was the 1st sentence incorrect? If so, why??

教えってください！ありがとうございます！

[jbraswell]

The first sentence simply translates to "She went to Japan."

The verb in the second sentence, then, would be short for 行っていました,
which is the polite past tense of the progressive form 行っている。Literally, it would translate into something like "She was in the state of going to Japan." The idea is that you'd be talking about the time that she was actually in the process of going to Japan.

[taikutsu]

彼女は日本に行きました.
This is "she went to Japan"

彼女は日本に行ってました.
I'm assuming this was supposed to be ～行っていました。but it also means "she went to Japan".

Someone with mad Japanese skillz correct me if I'm wrong, but as much as I can tell, the latter more directly implies that she is no longer in Japan. It's literally, "she went to, and was in Japan", or 行って plus the past polite いる.

Also, if I'm not mistaken, you can't use forms of 行っている to mean "is going to".

[Javizy]

彼女は日本に行ってました.
I'm assuming this was supposed to be ～行っていました。

Dropping the い is extremely common in speech. It's like the difference between don't and do not. Could have been a typo, but they're both acceptable.

[l3in8]

sorry!
it was typo!
Thanks for your explanation !
I got another explanation from my friends

「彼女は日本に行きました」だと、行ったまままだ帰って来ていない状態だと思われがちです。
「行っていました」にすれば、「行って、今は帰って来ている」という意味になります。

彼女は日本に行きました　sounds "she had gone to Japan and she is not back yet."
行ってきた is more natural to mean "she has been to Japan and now she is back."

ありがとうございます！

[jbraswell]

Also, if I'm not mistaken, you can't use forms of 行っている to mean "is going to".

Why would you think this?

[taikutsu]

Also, if I'm not mistaken, you can't use forms of 行っている to mean "is going to".

Why would you think this?

The way I've seen them used in context, and the explanations I've seen by others knowledgeable about Japanese grammar indicate that 行っている and 来ている have different meanings compared to other verbs with ～ている. For example, here is part of a sentence I found on a blog post:

1990年にアメリカに行っていた時の写真です。

It means "pictures from when I went to America in 1990", not "pictures from when I was going to America in 1990".

The way to say someone is (or was) in the process of going somewhere is apparently 行く途中.

[jbraswell]

Yeah, certainly 途中 makes it clearer. I suppose now that I think about it more, I notice that 行っていた seems to be more often used to indicate a period of repeated goings.