diànhuà lái le.

The phone call came.

Breakdown of diànhuà lái le.

• 了le: perfective particle
• 来lái: to come
• 电话diànhuà: phone call

Questions & Answers about diànhuà lái le.

Why is 电话 at the beginning of the sentence?

In this sentence, 电话 is the thing being talked about—the topic or subject-like element.

So 电话 来 了 is literally something like:

• phone call + come + le

Natural English does not say the phone call came very often, but Mandarin often puts the thing/event first and then says what happened to it.

Here, 电话 means a phone call or the call, and 来了 tells you that it has arrived/came in.

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Why is the verb 来 used? A phone call does not literally “come,” does it?

In Mandarin, 来 is often used more broadly than English come.

With 电话, 来 means that a call comes in / arrives. It describes the appearance of the call as an event.

So:

• 电话来了。 = A call came in. / The call has come.
• It does not mean the telephone physically walked over somewhere.

This is a very natural Chinese way to describe incoming things or newly appearing events.

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What does 了 mean here?