In my experience, if you say, for example, 怖かった, you can drop the と思った because it helps the sentence not feel unnecessarily formal or long. As far as what’s grammatically correct, I believe you would actually use 怖かったと思います if you were saying you thought something was scary.
Both 強いと思った and 怖かったと思う are used, although the former feels more natural IMO. 怖かったと思った doesn’t sound idiomatic if you want to say “I thought it was scary”, and Japanese doesn’t really make a distinction between “I thought” and “I had thought”, although saying と思っていた would achieve a similar result.
Both are correct but the meaning is different. To me, 怖かったと思う is “I think (they) must have been scared” (eg talking about someone else’s past experience) or “I think I was probably scared” (talking about your own experience but not 100% sure you remember how you felt). While if you’re saying 怖いと思った you are 100% sure you thought it’s scary/felt scared at the time it happened. I can’t think of a situation where you’d say 怖かったと思った. If it exists it must be a very marginal use.
I guess it’s the difference between “I thought it was scary” vs “I thought it had been scary”. But I’d like to know the opinion of somebody with better knowledge of the language.
Think of it as “at the time I thought – this is scary!”
こわいとおもった！
I do believe you are doubling the past here. 怖かった – I was afraid と思った – I thought
Combining them makes the sentence mean “I thought (in the past) that I was afraid (in a further past)
Where as 怖いと思った would mean I thought (in the past) that I’m afraid (at the moment in the past you are speaking about)
怖かったと思う would mean that I think (now) that I was afraid (in the past)
Does this make sense?
Edit: the 怖い could refer to anyone, not just yourself, depending on context, but for ease of understanding I made it all about the speaker
Well in one you talk about how you thought something in the past from the perspective of the time you were thinking was scary. The other one you thought something at the time of thinking was scary.
1. What monographs compile *kango* 漢語? 2. What [websites](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sino-Japanese_vocabulary#References) list *kango* ? 3. Please specify if your recommendations…
7 comments
In my experience, if you say, for example, 怖かった, you can drop the と思った because it helps the sentence not feel unnecessarily formal or long. As far as what’s grammatically correct, I believe you would actually use 怖かったと思います if you were saying you thought something was scary.
Both 強いと思った and 怖かったと思う are used, although the former feels more natural IMO. 怖かったと思った doesn’t sound idiomatic if you want to say “I thought it was scary”, and Japanese doesn’t really make a distinction between “I thought” and “I had thought”, although saying と思っていた would achieve a similar result.
Both are correct but the meaning is different. To me, 怖かったと思う is “I think (they) must have been scared” (eg talking about someone else’s past experience) or “I think I was probably scared” (talking about your own experience but not 100% sure you remember how you felt). While if you’re saying 怖いと思った you are 100% sure you thought it’s scary/felt scared at the time it happened.
I can’t think of a situation where you’d say 怖かったと思った. If it exists it must be a very marginal use.
I guess it’s the difference between “I thought it was scary” vs “I thought it had been scary”. But I’d like to know the opinion of somebody with better knowledge of the language.
Think of it as “at the time I thought – this is scary!”
こわいとおもった！
I do believe you are doubling the past here.
怖かった – I was afraid
と思った – I thought
Combining them makes the sentence mean “I thought (in the past) that I was afraid (in a further past)
Where as 怖いと思った would mean I thought (in the past) that I’m afraid (at the moment in the past you are speaking about)
怖かったと思う would mean that I think (now) that I was afraid (in the past)
Does this make sense?
Edit: the 怖い could refer to anyone, not just yourself, depending on context, but for ease of understanding I made it all about the speaker
Well in one you talk about how you thought something in the past from the perspective of the time you were thinking was scary. The other one you thought something at the time of thinking was scary.