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Ellos habían oído un rumor muy chocante y desagradable.

Ellos habían oído un rumor muy chocante y desagradable.
They had heard a very shocking and unpleasant rumor.
From Lesson 483:Subjective impressions (resultar)·Spanish (Latin America)

Questions & Answers about Ellos habían oído un rumor muy chocante y desagradable.

How could we express the core idea of this sentence using resultar, the focus of this lesson?
You could say, El rumor les resultó muy chocante y desagradable (The rumor proved/turned out to be very shocking and unpleasant to them). Here, resultar acts as a subjective evaluative pseudo-copulative verb—a fancy way of saying it links the subject (el rumor) to its descriptive adjectives while showing their subjective reaction (les) to it.
Both chocante and desagradable are adjectives derived from verbs. How does this word formation work?
Chocante is formed from the verb chocar (to shock / to crash) plus the suffix -nte, which means it actively does the action (shocking). Desagradable comes from desagradar (to displease) plus the suffix -ble, indicating it has the inherent quality of causing displeasure (unpleasant).
Why use the past perfect habían oído here instead of the simple past oyeron?
Habían oído (they had heard) sets the background timeline. It indicates that the action of hearing the rumor happened prior to another established event in the past. In a wider story context, this sentence would likely be followed by what they did next as a result of having heard it.
Why does the past participle oído have an accent mark on the í?
The accent mark indicates a hiatus. It breaks the natural blending (diphthong) of the strong vowel o and the weak vowel i, forcing them to be pronounced in two distinct syllables: o-í-do. Without the written accent, the word would be pronounced as two syllables instead of three, violating Spanish stress rules.

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