Is it wrong to say: "I had learnt that long back"?
Is it more apt to say "I had learnt that long ago"?
Learn English – Long ago vs. Long back
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I would think that "a year ago" is the phrase normally used. Looking at the data reported by the Corpus of Contemporary American, I can create the following chart.
"Year ago" and "years ago" are the most used phrases, at least in American English.
Looking at what reported by the British National Corpus, I obtain the following data.
"Year ago" and "years ago" are still the most used phrases, compared to "year back" and "years back".
Differently from what reported from the Corpus of Contemporary American, "year back" and "years back" are not used in academic contexts.
First things first: in this case, it's "ages ago." Using "before" seems to require some kind of extra information, e.g. "ages before I turned thirty."
Additionally, you should probably be using the past tense:
I went through that stage ages ago.
The present perfect (of which "have been" is an example) is used to express an unspecified time before the present. That's why "ages ago" didn't seem to mesh: because you were specifying the time. On the other hand, either of the following would work just fine, because the time remains unspecified.
I've been through that stage.
I've been through that stage many times.
Hope this helps.
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Best Answer
Using "long ago" is the correct (i.e. commonly heard) term. As seen in this Ngram, "long back" is extremely rare.
That's not to say that there aren't some constructions where "long back" might be correct, but it's quite uncommon. As noted in the comments, the sentence "I learned that a long time back/ago" would be acceptable.