Mi cuñado llegó ayer.

In modern Spanish, possessives like mi, tu, su, nuestro usually go directly before the noun without an article.

So you say:

• mi cuñado = my brother-in-law
• mi casa = my house

Using el mi cuñado would sound wrong in standard modern Spanish.

Cuñado means brother-in-law.

It can refer to:

• your spouse’s brother, or
• your sibling’s husband

The feminine form is cuñada = sister-in-law.

The letter ñ is a separate letter in Spanish. It is pronounced like the ny sound in canyon.

So cuñado is pronounced roughly like:

• coo-NYAH-doh

Not coo-nah-doh and not coo-yah-doh.

The accent mark in llegó shows where the stress goes: lle-GÓ.

It also helps distinguish this form from other possible forms of the verb. Here, llegó is the third person singular preterite of llegar:

• yo llegué = I arrived
• tú llegaste = you arrived
• él/ella/usted llegó = he/she/you arrived

So the accent is part of the correct spelling of this verb form.

Llegó is in the preterite, which is the Spanish past tense commonly used for a completed action.

Here it means:

• he arrived
• she arrived
• it arrived
• you arrived (formal)

In this sentence, because of mi cuñado, we understand it as my brother-in-law arrived.

The preterite is used because the sentence describes a completed event: the arrival happened at a specific time, ayer (yesterday).

• Mi cuñado llegó ayer = my brother-in-law arrived yesterday

If you used the imperfect, llegaba, it would usually suggest an ongoing/repeated action or background situation, which does not fit as naturally here.

Spanish often drops subject pronouns when the subject is clear from the context or from the noun already stated.

Since mi cuñado is already the subject, adding él would be unnecessary:

• Mi cuñado llegó ayer = natural
• Él llegó ayer = He arrived yesterday
• Mi cuñado, él llegó ayer = usually unnecessary unless you are emphasizing or clarifying something

Spanish does this much more often than English.

Because llegó is a verb meaning arrived, and mi cuñado is the person doing that action.

So the structure is:

• Mi cuñado = subject
• llegó = verb
• ayer = time expression

Spanish word order is often similar to English here: Subject + Verb + Time expression.

Yes. Ayer can move around, although some positions are more neutral than others.

Common possibilities:

• Mi cuñado llegó ayer.
• Ayer llegó mi cuñado.
• Mi cuñado ayer llegó. (possible, but less neutral and more marked)

The most neutral version here is Mi cuñado llegó ayer.

In most of Spain today, ll is pronounced the same as y. This is called yeísmo.

So llegó sounds roughly like:

• ye-GO or jye-GO, depending on the speaker

The exact sound can vary by region, but for most learners it is fine to treat ll and y as the same sound.

The short possessive mi does not change for gender.

So you say:

• mi cuñado = my brother-in-law
• mi cuñada = my sister-in-law
• mi hermano = my brother
• mi hermana = my sister

It only changes for number:

• mi cuñado = my brother-in-law
• mis cuñados = my brothers-in-law / my in-laws (depending on context)

No. In normal English, that would be incorrect.

The best translation is:

• My brother-in-law arrived yesterday.

Spanish preterite often corresponds to the simple past in English.

Yes, llegar is the normal verb for to arrive.

Examples:

• Llegué tarde. = I arrived late.
• Llegaron esta mañana. = They arrived this morning.

Unlike English, Spanish does not usually need a separate word like to before a destination in the same way. You often say:

• Llegué a Madrid. = I arrived in Madrid / I arrived at Madrid

The plural is cuñados.

So:

• mi cuñado = my brother-in-law
• mis cuñados = my brothers-in-law / my in-laws, depending on context

If you mean only women:

• mis cuñadas = my sisters-in-law

Yes, in Spain cuñado can sometimes be used informally to describe a person who acts like a know-it-all, often giving confident but poorly informed opinions.

But in this sentence, Mi cuñado llegó ayer, the meaning is the normal family one: my brother-in-law.

You would say:

• Mi cuñada llegó ayer.

Only the noun changes from masculine cuñado to feminine cuñada. The verb llegó stays the same because it is still third person singular.