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Terminamos el trabajo a las diez.

Terminamos el trabajo a las diez.
We finish work at ten.
From Lesson 49:Telling time (es la, son las)·Spanish (Spain)

Questions & Answers about Terminamos el trabajo a las diez.

Why is it a las diez instead of son las diez?
Your current lesson teaches son las... to say 'it is [time]'. However, when you want to say that an action happens at a certain time, you use the preposition a (at) instead of the verb son (they are). So, son las diez means 'it is ten o'clock', but a las diez means 'at ten o'clock'.
Why is the word las used before diez?
In Spanish, hours are always feminine because they refer to the hidden word horas (hours). Because ten is more than one hour, we use the plural feminine word for 'the', which is las.
Why does the Spanish sentence say el trabajo when the English translation just says 'work'?
In English, we usually leave out 'the' when talking about work as a general activity, as in 'we finish work'. In Spanish, you generally need to include the definite article (el, la, los, or las) for these kinds of nouns. So you literally say 'we finish the work'.
Where is the word for 'we' in this sentence?
It is built right into the verb! Terminamos comes from the verb terminar (to finish). The -amos ending specifically means 'we do it'. You could say nosotros terminamos, but Spanish speakers usually drop the nosotros because the verb ending already makes it perfectly clear who is doing the action.

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