When to use it
Use it to ask whether guests, family or a group reached their destination last night.
The sentence in English: “Did they arrive last night?”
In “Did they arrive last night?” ‘Did’ carries the past tense, so ‘arrive’ stays in its base form. ‘last night’ uses ‘last’ to point to the night before today.
- 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
The sentence in Hindi: “क्या वे कल रात पहुँचे?”
In “क्या वे कल रात पहुँचे?” the verb ‘पहुँचे’ is the simple past of पहुँचना (to arrive). This verb is intransitive, so the subject ‘वे’ (they) takes no ने and the verb agrees with it in the plural. ‘कल रात’ means ‘last night’ here because the verb is past.
- क्या
- particleyes/no question particle
- वे
- pronoun3rd person plural pronoun 'they'
- कल
- adverbtime word: here 'yesterday', made clear by the past verb
- रात
- nounfeminine noun 'night'; कल रात = 'last night'
- पहुँचे
- verbपहुँचना · aspect: perfective · gender: masculine · number: plural · intransitive, so no ने; the verb agrees with वे
What changes from one language to the other: English × Hindi
Hindi ‘कल’ covers both ‘yesterday’ and ‘tomorrow’, and the verb tense decides; English uses different words. With an intransitive verb like पहुँचना, Hindi does not use ने, unlike a transitive verb such as समझाना.
Example conversation
— क्या वे कल रात पहुँचे?
— Did they arrive last night?
— हाँ, लगभग ग्यारह बजे।
— Yes, around eleven o'clock.