When to use it
Use it to ask whether guests or relatives arrived the evening before.
“Did they arrive last night?” · The sentence in English
"Did they arrive last night?" uses "did" for the past question, and "last night" is a fixed expression.
- Did
- auxiliary verbdo · tense: past · auxiliary that makes a question in the past
- they
- pronounpersonal pronoun, third person plural
- arrive
- verbarrive · form: base form (infinitive without "to") · after "did" the verb stays in its base form
- last
- adjectiveadjective; "last night" means the night before today
- night
- nounnoun
“Sind sie gestern Abend angekommen?” · The sentence in German
"Sind sie gestern Abend angekommen?" uses "sein" as the auxiliary, because "ankommen" is a verb of movement. In the participle the "ge" goes inside the separable verb: an-ge-kommen. "Gestern Abend" means "yesterday evening".
- Sind
- auxiliary verbsein · tense: present · mood: indicative · person: third · number: plural · verbs of movement make the Perfekt with "sein", not "haben"
- sie
- pronoun"they" (small letter)
- gestern
- adverb"yesterday"
- Abend
- nounmasculine noun: "evening"; "gestern Abend" = "last night"
- angekommen
- verbankommen · form: past participle · "arrived"; separable verb: an + ge + kommen
What changes from one language to the other · English × German
English uses "did" for every verb in the past; German chooses between "haben" and "sein", and verbs of movement take "sein". English "last night" becomes "gestern Abend" (yesterday evening).
Example conversation
— Sind sie gestern Abend angekommen?
— Did they arrive last night?
— Ja, so gegen elf Uhr.
— Yes, around eleven o'clock.