Breakdown of Der Kellner hat uns ein Messer und eine Gabel gegeben.
ein
a, an (eine)
und
and
haben
to have
uns
us
Questions & Answers about Der Kellner hat uns ein Messer und eine Gabel gegeben.
Why does the past participle given as gegeben end in -en instead of -t?
Because geben (to give) is an irregular or strong verb. Regular verbs form their past participle with ge-...-t, but many common irregular verbs use the pattern ge-...-en. For geben, the past participle is simply gegeben.
Why is gegeben at the very end of the sentence?
In German, the conversational past tense (the Perfekt) uses two verbs. The helping verb, which is hat here, takes the normal second position in the sentence. The past participle, gegeben, gets pushed all the way to the very end.
Why do we use the word uns in this sentence?
uns means us or to us. The waiter gave the items to us, making us the indirect receiver of the action (the dative object). If we were doing the action ourselves, we would use the subject pronoun wir (we).
Why does the sentence use ein for the knife but eine for the fork?
This happens because of their grammatical genders. Messer is a neuter noun, so its indefinite article is ein. Gabel is feminine, so it takes eine. They are both direct objects (in the accusative case) being given by the waiter.