Some German verbs have no real subject. There is no person or thing doing the action — it simply rains, it simply gets dark, it simply feels cold to someone. German fills the empty subject slot with the dummy pronoun es ("it"), much as English does in "it is raining." But German goes further than English in one crucial way: it expresses many bodily sensations impersonally, with a dative experiencer. Getting this wrong produces one of the most famous embarrassing errors a learner can make.
Weather and natural-phenomenon verbs
The clearest impersonal verbs are the weather verbs. They describe processes with no agent, so German supplies es as a placeholder subject. The es is grammatically required — you cannot drop it.
Es regnet schon seit heute Morgen.
It has been raining since this morning.
Im Dezember schneit es hier fast jeden Tag.
In December it snows here almost every day.
Pass auf, es donnert und blitzt!
Watch out, it's thundering and lightning!
Other members of this family: es friert (it's freezing), es hagelt (it's hailing), es dämmert (it's getting dark / dawn is breaking), es taut (it's thawing). All of them keep es in the subject slot, just like English "it."
Sensation verbs: the dative experiencer
Here is where German diverges sharply from English. To say how you feel — cold, warm, hot, unwell, dizzy — German treats the sensation as something that happens to you, not something you are. The person experiencing it goes into the dative case, and the verb is sein in the third person singular.
The literal structure is "to me it is cold":
Mir ist kalt — kannst du das Fenster zumachen?
I'm cold — can you close the window?
Ist dir warm genug, oder soll ich die Heizung anmachen?
Are you warm enough, or should I turn on the heating?
Nach dem Karussell war ihm richtig schlecht.
After the carousel he felt really sick.
The dative pronouns you need here are mir (to me), dir (to you, informal), ihm (to him), ihr (to her), uns (to us), euch (to you all), ihnen (to them), and Ihnen (to you, formal).
You may meet two surface variants. The es can appear explicitly or be left implicit when something else opens the clause:
Es ist mir kalt.
I'm cold. (with explicit dummy es)
Mir ist kalt.
I'm cold. (es dropped because mir is in first position)
Both are correct. The everyday spoken version simply starts with the experiencer: Mir ist kalt.
Why "I am cold" is wrong — and what it really means
This is the insight competitors skip. In English the experiencer is the grammatical subject: "I am cold." Transferring that word-for-word into German gives Ich bin kalt — which is a real, grammatical sentence, but it does not mean you feel cold. Ich bin kalt describes your personality: that you are a cold, unfeeling, unfriendly person. Saying it at a dinner party because you want the window closed is the classic learner blunder.
The logic to internalize: a temporary bodily sensation is impersonal in German. It is not a property of you; it is a state that is true with respect to you. So it lands on a dative experiencer, and the subject slot stays empty (filled by es when needed).
The same impersonal-dative frame powers the most common "how are you" exchange in German:
Wie geht es dir? — Danke, es geht mir gut.
How are you? — Thanks, I'm well. (literally: how does it go to you / it goes well to me)
Meiner Oma geht es heute leider nicht so gut.
Unfortunately my grandma isn't doing so well today.
Note again: the person is in the dative (dir, mir, meiner Oma), and es is the subject of gehen. Nobody is "going" anywhere — it is purely impersonal.
Existential es gibt + accusative
A third member of the es family is es gibt, the standard way to say "there is / there are." Two things surprise English speakers:
- The verb stays singular (gibt, from geben, "to give") whether the thing that exists is singular or plural.
- What follows is in the accusative, not the nominative — because grammatically you are saying "it gives something."
In dieser Straße gibt es zwei richtig gute Bäckereien.
There are two really good bakeries on this street.
Gibt es hier in der Nähe einen Geldautomaten?
Is there a cash machine near here?
Zum Glück gibt es noch Hoffnung.
Fortunately there's still hope.
In the second example, einen Geldautomaten is accusative (masculine), not the nominative ein Geldautomat — a direct consequence of es gibt governing the accusative.
Common Mistakes
❌ Ich bin kalt.
Incorrect if you mean you feel cold — this actually means 'I am a cold, unfeeling person.'
✅ Mir ist kalt.
I'm cold. (impersonal, with a dative experiencer)
❌ Ich bin warm.
Incorrect if you mean you feel warm — it sounds like a personality statement (and is dated slang for 'I'm gay').
✅ Mir ist warm.
I'm warm.
❌ Regnet heute den ganzen Tag.
Incorrect — the dummy subject es is obligatory: a weather verb needs its grammatical subject.
✅ Es regnet heute den ganzen Tag.
It's raining all day today.
❌ Wie geht es du?
Incorrect — the person is the experiencer and must be dative, not nominative.
✅ Wie geht es dir?
How are you?
❌ Es gibt ein guter Supermarkt in der Nähe.
Incorrect — es gibt governs the accusative, so 'a good supermarket' must be accusative.
✅ Es gibt einen guten Supermarkt in der Nähe.
There's a good supermarket nearby.
Key Takeaways
- Weather verbs need the obligatory dummy subject es: Es regnet, es schneit, es donnert.
- Bodily sensations are impersonal with a dative experiencer: Mir ist kalt, not Ich bin kalt. The latter describes your character.
- Wie geht es dir? is the same impersonal-dative frame: es is the subject, the person is dative.
- Es gibt means "there is/are," stays singular, and is followed by the accusative.
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Start learning German→Related Topics
- The Many Uses of esB1 — es is far more than 'it' — it is a neuter pronoun, an impersonal subject, a positional dummy that holds the front slot, and an anticipatory correlate for clauses.
- The Dative of Interest and Free DativesB2 — The 'free' datives that aren't required by the verb — dative of interest, the possessive dative with body parts, and the ethical dative.
- es gibt and Impersonal ConstructionsA2 — Why German says es gibt for 'there is/are' with the accusative and no plural, when to use es ist/es sind instead, and how impersonal es behaves.
- Weather ExpressionsA2 — Impersonal es regnet/schneit, temperature with Grad, the dative Mir ist kalt for personal cold (never Ich bin kalt), and why English weather idioms don't translate.
- ich bin kalt and Other Sein/Haben State ErrorsA2 — Why 'Ich bin kalt' means 'I'm cold-hearted' (not 'I feel cold') and 'Ich bin Hunger' is impossible — the German split between sein, haben, and the dative experiencer for sensations and states.
- The Dative CaseA2 — What the dative case is, how its articles and pronouns change, and how to use it for the indirect object.