Είδαμε το κάστρο χτες.

to see

Breakdown of Είδαμε το κάστρο χτες.

• χτες: yesterday
• το κάστρο: castle

Questions & Answers about Είδαμε το κάστρο χτες.

What does Είδαμε mean exactly, and why doesn’t the sentence need a word for we?

Είδαμε means we saw.

Greek verbs usually show the subject through their ending, so a separate subject pronoun is often unnecessary. The ending -αμε tells you the subject is we.

So:

• είδαμε = we saw
• not usually we saw with a separate we

You could add εμείς for emphasis, but normally it is omitted:

• Εμείς είδαμε το κάστρο χτες. = We saw the castle yesterday.
  This sounds more emphatic, like contrasting we with someone else.

Why is the verb είδαμε and not something based on βλέπω?

Because βλέπω (I see) has an irregular past form.

The verb works like this:

• βλέπω = I see / I am seeing
• είδα = I saw

So the past stem is not βλεπ- here; it changes to ειδ-.

That means:

• είδα = I saw
• είδες = you saw
• είδε = he/she/it saw
• είδαμε = we saw
• είδατε = you all saw
• είδαν / είδανε = they saw

This is very common in Greek: some verbs have irregular aorist forms.