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Questions & Answers about Mir tut der Hals weh.
Why does the sentence use Mir instead of just saying Mein Hals (my throat)?
In German, when talking about body parts, you usually do not use possessive words like mein or dein. Instead, you use a dative pronoun to show who is experiencing the feeling (here, mir means to me) and the definite article for the body part (der). Literally, it says 'To me hurts the throat.'
Why is weh at the very end of the sentence?
This comes from the separable verb wehtun, which means to hurt. In a normal sentence, the conjugated part of the verb (tut) takes the second position, and the separable prefix (weh) gets pushed to the very end.
What is the subject of this sentence? Is it Mir?
No, the subject is actually der Hals (the throat). You can tell because Mir is in the dative case, meaning it is the object receiving the action. The throat is the thing doing the hurting, so it is the subject in the nominative case.
Can I put der Hals at the beginning of the sentence instead?
Yes, you can absolutely say Der Hals tut mir weh. Putting Mir at the beginning just puts a little more focus on the fact that it is you who is experiencing the pain, which is a very common and natural way native speakers talk.