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, so ‘arrive’ stays bare; ‘last’ points 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 Urdu — “کیا وہ کل رات پہنچے؟”
In “کیا وہ کل رات پہنچے؟” the verb ‘پہنچے’ is the simple past of پہنچنا (to arrive). It is intransitive, so ‘وہ’ (they) takes no ‘نے’ and the verb agrees with it in the plural. ‘کل رات’ means ‘last night’ because the verb is past.
- کیا
- particleyes/no question particle
- وہ
- pronounpronoun, here plural 'they'
- کل
- adverbhere 'yesterday', made clear by the past verb
- رات
- nounfeminine noun 'night'; کل رات = 'last night'
- پہنچے
- verbپہنچنا · aspect: perfective · gender: masculine · number: plural · intransitive, so no نے; agrees with وہ (plural)
English × Urdu — What changes from one language to the other
Urdu ‘کل’ covers both ‘yesterday’ and ‘tomorrow’. With an intransitive verb Urdu uses no ‘نے’, unlike a transitive verb such as سمجھانا.
Example conversation
— کیا وہ کل رات پہنچے؟
— Did they arrive last night?
— ہاں، تقریباً گیارہ بجے۔
— Yes, around eleven o'clock.