Llegaron nueve personas.

Llegaron is the third-person plural preterite of llegar (to arrive).

So it means they arrived or, in this sentence, nine people arrived.

Why third-person plural?

• third person = not I/we and not you
• plural = more than one person

Why preterite?

• The preterite is used for a completed action in the past
• Here, the arrival is seen as a finished event

Because the subject is nueve personas, which is plural.

Even though nueve is one number, it refers to nine separate people, so the verb must be plural:

• Llegó una persona. = One person arrived.
• Llegaron nueve personas. = Nine people arrived.

The verb agrees with personas, not just with the idea of a number.

Spanish word order is more flexible than English word order.

In English, you usually say:

• Nine people arrived.

In Spanish, both are possible:

• Llegaron nueve personas.
• Nueve personas llegaron.

The version with the verb first, Llegaron nueve personas, is very natural when:

• you are reporting an event
• you are introducing new information
• you want the sentence to sound a bit more narrative or news-like

So this order is not strange at all.

Yes. It is grammatically correct.

Both sentences are possible:

• Llegaron nueve personas
• Nueve personas llegaron

The difference is mainly one of focus or style:

• Llegaron nueve personas often sounds like There arrived nine people / Nine people showed up
• Nueve personas llegaron puts more emphasis on nine people as the topic

In many everyday contexts, the first version sounds more natural when simply reporting what happened.

Because Spanish usually does not need subject pronouns when the verb ending already shows who or how many.

Llegaron already tells you it is:

• third person
• plural

So Spanish normally leaves out ellos/ellas unless the speaker wants:

• emphasis
• contrast
• clarification

For example:

• Llegaron tarde. = They arrived late.
• Ellos llegaron tarde, no nosotros. = They arrived late, not us.

In your sentence, nueve personas already gives the subject, so a pronoun would be unnecessary.

Because in Spanish, when you give a straightforward number before a noun, you usually do not use an article.

So:

• nueve personas = nine people

Not:

• las nueve personas unless you mean the nine people
• unas nueve personas if you mean about nine people

Compare:

• Llegaron nueve personas. = Nine people arrived.
• Llegaron las nueve personas. = The nine people arrived.
• Llegaron unas nueve personas. = About nine people arrived.

Both can refer to people, but they work differently.

Personas is countable:

• nueve personas = nine people

Gente is a collective singular noun:

• mucha gente = a lot of people
• poca gente = few people

Because gente is grammatically singular, it usually takes a singular verb:

• Llegó mucha gente. = A lot of people arrived.

You would not normally say:

• nueve gente ❌

So personas is the right choice when giving an exact number.

Yes. After numbers greater than one, the noun is normally plural.

So:

• una persona
• dos personas
• nueve personas

This is similar to English:

• one person
• two people

The only special case is one, where Spanish uses singular:

• Llegó una persona.
• Llegaron dos personas.

In practice, the sentence is understood as Nine people arrived.

That is because nueve personas is the subject of llegaron.

Technically, llegaron by itself can mean they arrived, but once nueve personas is added, it naturally functions as the subject:

• Llegaron nueve personas = Nine people arrived

So a learner should treat the sentence as a normal subject-verb sentence with flexible word order, not as two separate pieces.

A typical pronunciation in Spain is roughly:

yeh-GA-ron
with the stress on -ga-

A few details:

• ll in most of Spain sounds similar to the y in yes
• g before a is a normal hard g
• the r in -ron is a tapped Spanish r, not a strong English r
• the final n is clearly pronounced

So:

• llegaron → yeh-GA-ron

In some parts of Spain, ll may sound slightly different, but for most learners, using a y-like sound is perfectly fine.

Because cardinal numbers in Spanish normally go before the noun they count.

So:

• nueve personas
• tres coches
• dos casas

This is the standard pattern.

A useful detail:

• uno changes before masculine singular nouns: un libro
• and before feminine singular nouns: una persona

But with nueve, there is no change:

• nueve personas

Yes, it is completely natural in Spain.

A speaker in Spain could absolutely say:

• Llegaron nueve personas.

Depending on context, they might also say:

• Vinieron nueve personas. = Nine people came.
• Han llegado nueve personas. = Nine people have arrived / often used for a recent arrival in many varieties of Spanish

But your original sentence is simple, correct, and very natural.