Word
Ich habe die E-Mail am sechzehnten geschrieben, nicht am siebzehnten.
Meaning
I wrote the email on the sixteenth, not on the seventeenth.
Part of speech
sentence
Pronunciation
Course
Breakdown of Ich habe die E-Mail am sechzehnten geschrieben, nicht am siebzehnten.
ich
I
haben
to have
nicht
not
schreiben
to write
Questions & Answers about Ich habe die E-Mail am sechzehnten geschrieben, nicht am siebzehnten.
Why do the ordinal numbers end in -ten here (sechzehnten, siebzehnten) instead of just -te?
Because they come after am (which is short for an dem). In German, ordinal numbers act like adjectives. After a preposition with a definite article like am, which puts the sentence into the dative case, the ordinal number takes the ending -en. So, der sechzehnte (the sixteenth) becomes am sechzehnten (on the sixteenth).
Wait, why is it sechzehnten and siebzehnten? Don't the numbers six and seven have extra letters?
Good eye! Just like in English where "five" becomes "fifth", German numbers can change slightly when building teens and ordinals. The number sechs drops the "s" to become sechzehn, and sieben drops the "en" to become siebzehn. Then you just add the -ten ending for dates after am.
Why is geschrieben placed before the comma, instead of at the very end of the whole sentence?
In the spoken past tense (Perfekt), the past participle (geschrieben) goes to the end of its clause. The first complete clause is Ich habe die E-Mail am sechzehnten geschrieben. The part after the comma (nicht am siebzehnten) is just a short, added clarification, so it doesn't mess with the word order of the main sentence.