El meu pare va menjar un plat de peix amb arròs.

In Catalan, it is very common to use the definite article before a possessive:

• el meu pare = my father
• la meva mare = my mother
• el meu cotxe = my car

So el meu pare is completely normal Catalan.

This is one of the biggest differences from English. English usually says just my father, but Catalan often says the my father literally.

A few notes:

• This article + possessive pattern is especially common with family members, body parts, and everyday nouns.
• In some contexts, the article may be omitted, but in a basic sentence like this, el meu pare is the standard form.

Here, va menjar is a past tense, not a movement verb.

Catalan often forms the past using:

• anar in the present + infinitive

So:

• va menjar = ate

Literally, it looks like goes to eat, but that is not how it functions here. It is a grammatical past tense called the periphrastic past, and it is one of the most common ways to talk about completed actions in Catalan.

For example:

• va parlar = spoke
• va arribar = arrived
• va dormir = slept

So in this sentence:

• El meu pare va menjar... = My father ate...

Both can refer to the past, but they belong to different styles or registers.

• va menjar = the common spoken and standard past form
• menjà = the simple past, more literary or formal in most modern Catalan

A learner will hear and use va menjar much more often in everyday Catalan.

So this sentence uses the most natural general-purpose past form.

The possessive must agree with the noun being possessed, not with the speaker.

• pare is masculine singular
• so the possessive is meu

Compare:

• el meu pare = my father
• la meva mare = my mother

So:

• masculine singular noun → meu
• feminine singular noun → meva

Un is the masculine singular indefinite article, equivalent to a or an in English.

• un plat = a dish / a plate

Because plat is masculine singular, it takes un.

Compare:

• un plat = a dish
• una taula = a table

It can suggest either, depending on context, but here plat is best understood as dish or plateful/serving.

So:

• un plat de peix = a fish dish / a plate of fish

It does not necessarily mean the physical ceramic plate itself. Very often, plat refers to a food serving or course.

De peix means of fish or fish-based, and it describes what kind of dish it was.

So:

• un plat de peix = a fish dish / a dish of fish

The preposition de is often used in Catalan to classify or describe a noun:

• sopa de tomàquet = tomato soup
• pastís de xocolata = chocolate cake
• plat de peix = fish dish

It tells you the content or type of the dish.

In normal usage, no. People will understand it as a dish whose food is fish, not a literal plate constructed from fish.

With food words, de very often indicates ingredient, content, or type:

• sopa de peix = fish soup
• amanida de tomàquet = tomato salad

So in this sentence, de peix clearly refers to the food.

In practice, it most naturally means that the dish included or was served with rice.

So:

• un plat de peix amb arròs = a fish dish with rice

Grammatically, amb arròs follows peix, but semantically it usually describes the whole food combination, not just the single word peix in isolation.

A listener would normally understand:

• the father ate a dish of fish and rice, or fish served with rice

Yes. This is the standard subject + verb + object order, just like basic English sentences.

Breakdown:

• El meu pare = subject
• va menjar = verb
• un plat de peix amb arròs = object

So the sentence structure is very straightforward and natural.

Yes, Catalan often drops subject pronouns, but not usually full noun subjects if you want to identify who did the action.

• Va menjar un plat de peix amb arròs = He/She ate a fish dish with rice
• El meu pare va menjar... explicitly says my father

So if the subject is already known from context, Catalan can omit it. But in this sentence, the speaker wants to name the subject clearly.

Yes. Pare is the normal Catalan word for father.

Examples:

• el meu pare = my father
• el seu pare = his/her father

In some dialects or more familiar styles, you may also hear other forms, but pare is the basic standard word.

The accent in arròs shows where the stress falls and also helps indicate the vowel quality.

• arròs is stressed on the last syllable: ar-ròs

The written accent is important in Catalan because stress is not always predictable from English-style habits, and accents often distinguish pronunciation clearly.

So the accent helps you pronounce the word correctly.

A rough pronunciation guide for an English speaker is:

• El meu pare va menjar un plat de peix amb arròs
• roughly: el MEH-oo PAH-reh bah men-JAR oon PLAHT deh PESH ahm ah-RROS

A few useful notes:

• pare has two syllables: pa-re
• menjar is stressed on the last syllable
• peix sounds roughly like pesh
• arròs is stressed on the last syllable

This is only an approximation, but it can help at the beginning.

Yes. Like many simple past forms in translation, va menjar can correspond to:

• ate
• did eat (if English wants emphasis)

For example:

• El meu pare va menjar un plat de peix amb arròs = My father ate a fish dish with rice.
• In an emphatic context, it could also match My father did eat a fish dish with rice.

So the Catalan form itself is just a normal past tense; the exact English nuance depends on context.