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> 「確か、明日は先生の誕生日でしたよね。」

Came across this sentence during my Japanese class and am having trouble
understanding the nuance behind it and why でした can be used in this manner.

I tried asking my Japanese teacher why でした was used in this scenario instead
of です. She said it had to do with the nuance of the sentence. She said that
using です is not wrong but that でした is better.

I'm still a bit confused by it all so I'm hoping someone might be able to shed
some light on this.
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2018-04-15T06:28:02.190
57939
2018-04-15T09:51:02.310
2018-04-15T09:51:02.310
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question
grammar word-choice nuances modality
「確か、明日は先生の誕生日でしたよね。」Why でした and not です?
Not sure I'll be able to clearly convey this, but hear me out.

「確か、明日は先生の誕生日ですよね。」in and of itself is grammatically correct. If you were to
say this to your teacher, nobody around you would look at you funny.

In your example, that「でした」denotes a fact you had assumed to be true in the
past. You are saying that "you remember, at a certain point in the past, that
your birthday was this particular day."

As one of the commenter pointed out, the difference here would be translated
into English as: 「ですよね。」"I believe tomorrow is your birthday, right?"
「でしたよね。」"I believe tomorrow was your birthday, right?" Nothing really special
here if you speak English. it's pretty much exactly the same interpretation in
Japanese.

You could also look at it from a confidence stand point. You are much more
confident when using「ですよね。」than「でしたよね。」 - again, the difference would be
something like "I believe tomorrow is your birthday" compared to "I believe
tomorrow _was_ your birthday."
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2018-04-15T07:37:20.270
57942
2018-04-15T07:37:20.270
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answer