El teniente llegó ayer.

In Spanish, nouns normally need an article when you are talking about a specific person or thing, so el teniente means the lieutenant.

Here, teniente is being used as a regular noun, not as direct address, so el is expected.

• El teniente llegó ayer. = The lieutenant arrived yesterday.

If you were speaking directly to that person, you would usually not use the article:

• Teniente, venga aquí. = Lieutenant, come here.

Llegó is the preterite form of llegar for he/she/it or you (formal).

So it means:

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

The preterite is used because this is a completed action in the past. Since ayer gives a finished past time reference, the preterite is the normal choice:

• El teniente llegó ayer. = completed arrival yesterday

The accent mark shows that the stress falls on the last syllable: lle-gó.

It also helps distinguish it from llego:

• llego = I arrive / I am arriving
• llegó = he/she arrived

So the accent is doing real grammatical work here, not just pronunciation work.

Yes, but it changes the feel slightly.

Spanish often leaves out subject pronouns because the verb ending already tells you the person. So:

• El teniente llegó ayer. = normal
• Él llegó ayer. = He arrived yesterday

You would use él if the subject is already understood from context, or if you want to emphasize he in contrast with someone else.

Also note the difference:

• el = the
• él = he

The accent mark matters.

Yes, Spanish word order is flexible. Ayer can go in different places.

All of these are possible:

• El teniente llegó ayer.
• Ayer llegó el teniente.
• El teniente ayer llegó. (possible, but less neutral)

The version with ayer at the end is very natural and neutral. Putting ayer first often gives it a bit more focus:

• Ayer llegó el teniente. = Yesterday, the lieutenant arrived.

No. Ayer by itself means yesterday.

So you say:

• llegó ayer = arrived yesterday

Not:

• llegó en ayer
• llegó a ayer

Spanish does not use a preposition here, just like normal English does not say on yesterday.

In most of Spain today, ll is pronounced the same as y. So llegó sounds roughly like ye-GO.

A rough pronunciation of the whole sentence is:

• el te-NYEN-te ye-GO a-YER

A few notes:

• teniente has the stress on -nien-
• llegó has the stress on the last syllable
• ayer is pronounced roughly a-YER

In some areas, ll may have a slightly different sound, but pronouncing it like y is fine for modern Spain Spanish.

Good question. In Spain, the present perfect (ha llegado) is indeed very common for recent past actions, but with a clearly finished time expression like ayer, the normal form is the preterite:

• Llegó ayer. = normal
• Ha llegado ayer. = generally not standard in Spain

So ayer strongly pushes Spanish toward the preterite because yesterday is seen as a completed time period.

Then you would normally say:

• La teniente llegó ayer.

In current standard Spanish, many rank nouns can stay the same in form and just change the article:

• el teniente
• la teniente

So the article tells you the gender here.

The verb form llegó by itself can mean he arrived, she arrived, or you arrived in the formal singular sense (usted).

But in this specific sentence, the subject is clearly el teniente, so the meaning is the lieutenant arrived yesterday.

If you were speaking directly and formally to the lieutenant, you would not normally say:

• El teniente llegó ayer

because that means the lieutenant arrived yesterday, not you arrived yesterday.

For you arrived yesterday, you would say:

• Usted llegó ayer.

To make it negative, put no before the verb:

• El teniente no llegó ayer. = The lieutenant didn’t arrive yesterday.

To turn it into a question, Spanish can simply use intonation, and in writing you add question marks:

• ¿El teniente llegó ayer? = Did the lieutenant arrive yesterday?

You could also move ayer for emphasis:

• ¿Llegó ayer el teniente?

That sounds a bit more marked, but it is still correct.