An additional て for some reason


I've heard this:

> ありがとう お腹すいてたんだ

Why "-te" form? And is て there at all? It looks to me ungrammatical.

Why not this?

> ありがとう お腹すいたんだ




～てた is an extremely common casual contraction of the past continuous ～ていた (in
the same way that the present continuous ～ている is commonly contracted to ～てる).

So the difference between お腹がすいた and お腹がすいてた is the same as the difference
between their present-tense equivalents お腹がすく and お腹がすいている. The former means
"I become/became hungry" and the latter means "I am/was hungry".

In practice, お腹すいたんだ would usually be taken as meaning "I'm starting to get
hungry right now" (because the plain past tense of a verb that indicates a
change in state is commonly used to indicate that that change has just
occurred), whereas お腹すいてたんだ indicates that the speaker has been hungry for a
little while.

