Putting past events in order in Japanese

Japanese has no separate tense matching English “had done”; context and verb forms show which past event came first. Here, もう with a verb stem plus 終わっていた shows that an action had already finished, while まだ with a verb's て-form plus いなかった means it had not happened yet at the past reference point, rather than simply “was not doing it.” In these examples, the later event takes the past form before とき but the dictionary form before 前に, even though both events happened in the past. Use the polite endings いました and いませんでした with people you do not know well or when speaking politely, and the plain endings いた and いなかった in casual conversation with friends and family.