Breakdown of Eles ligaram para o escritório anteontem.
eles
they (m)
o escritório
the office
para
to / for
ligar
to call
Questions & Answers about Eles ligaram para o escritório anteontem.
How do I form the past tense for "eles" with an -ar verb like ligar?
Ligaram is the eles (they) form of the regular verb ligar (to call/to connect) in the simple past tense. To form it, you drop the -ar from the infinitive and add the ending -aram.
Why is there a para before o escritório? In English, we just say "called the office".
In Portuguese, when you use ligar to mean making a phone call, it requires the preposition para (to) to show who or where you are calling. You can think of it literally as "they placed a call to the office".
How do you pronounce the -aram ending in ligaram?
Is anteontem really just one word?
Yes! It is a very common, single word that means "the day before yesterday". It is formed by combining the prefix ante- (before) and the word ontem (yesterday).