Breakdown of Das Hotel war damals sehr billig.
sein
to be
sehr
very
das Hotel
the hotel
billig
cheap
damals
back then
Questions & Answers about Das Hotel war damals sehr billig.
Why is the verb form war used here?
war is the simple past tense of sein (to be) for the third-person singular (er/sie/es). Because das Hotel acts as an "it" (es), it takes the form war. If the sentence were in the present tense, you would use ist.
Why does damals (back then) come before sehr billig? In English, "back then" goes at the end.
German sentence structure places time words (like damals) very early in the sentence, typically right after the conjugated verb. A good rule of thumb for German is that time information almost always comes before descriptions or adjectives like sehr billig.
Since das Hotel is a neuter ("das") word, why isn't an adjective ending added to make it sehr billiges?
In German, adjectives only get endings when they come directly in front of a noun (like in ein billiges Hotel). When the adjective comes after a verb (like war) to describe the subject, it never changes. It stays in its plain dictionary form: billig.
Could I use dann instead of damals to say "then"?
You wouldn't use dann here. dann usually means "then" in the sense of a sequence ("first this, then that"). damals specifically means "back then" or "in those days", which is exactly what you need when looking back at a past state.
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