Ahir no vaig cuinar a casa perquè ja vam sopar al restaurant.

Yesterday I did not cook at home because we had already had dinner at the restaurant.

Breakdown of Ahir no vaig cuinar a casa perquè ja vam sopar al restaurant.

• no: not
• a: at
• la casa: the home
• perquè: because

Questions & Answers about Ahir no vaig cuinar a casa perquè ja vam sopar al restaurant.

Why are vaig cuinar and vam sopar used here instead of a form like he cuinat?

These are forms of the Catalan periphrastic past, a very common way to talk about completed actions in the past.

• vaig cuinar = I cooked
• vam sopar = we had dinner / we ate dinner

The pattern is:

• vaig / vas / va / vam / vau / van
  • infinitive

So:

• vaig cuinar = I cooked
• vam sopar = we had dinner

For many learners, this looks strange because vaig normally means I go when it stands alone. But in this structure, it is just part of the past tense.

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What exactly do vaig and vam mean in this sentence?

Here, vaig and vam are auxiliary forms used to build the past tense.

• vaig = first person singular auxiliary for this past tense
• vam = first person plural auxiliary for this past tense

So:

• no vaig cuinar = I didn’t cook
• ja vam sopar = we already had dinner

Even though they come from the verb anar (to go), in this sentence they do not mean go.

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Why is the negative no vaig cuinar and not vaig no cuinar?