Breakdown of Der Kollege kauft das Sofa und es gefällt ihm sehr.
es
it
und
and
kaufen
to buy
sehr
very
gefallen
to please
ihm
him / it / to him / to it (dative)
der Kollege
the colleague
das Sofa
the sofa
Questions & Answers about Der Kollege kauft das Sofa und es gefällt ihm sehr.
Why does the sentence use ihm when the English translation says 'he likes'?
The verb gefallen is a dative verb. It literally translates to 'to be pleasing to'. So instead of saying 'He likes it', German says 'It is pleasing to him'. The word ihm is the dative form for a male person, meaning 'to him'.
What does the pronoun es refer to?
The pronoun es ('it') refers back to das Sofa. Because Sofa is a neuter noun in German (it takes das), it must be replaced by the neuter pronoun es. In this part of the sentence, es is the subject—the sofa is the thing doing the pleasing!
Why is the verb gefällt spelled with an ä instead of an a?
The base form of the verb is gefallen. Like many German verbs with an 'a' in the stem, it gets an umlaut (changes to ä) in the du (you) and er/sie/es (he/she/it) forms. Since the subject is es, the verb becomes gefällt.
Does the word und change the word order?
No. The word und (and) simply connects two normal main clauses. It takes up what we call 'position zero'. The second part of the sentence starts fresh: the subject es is in position 1, and the verb gefällt stays in its normal position 2.
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