Questions & Answers about Die Spritze tat gar nicht weh.
What verb does tat ... weh come from, and what tense is this?
It comes from the separable verb wehtun (to hurt). Here it is used in the simple past tense (Präteritum). The base verb is tun (to do), which becomes tat in the simple past, while the prefix weh gets pushed to the end of the sentence.
What does the word gar add to this sentence?
Adding gar before nicht creates the common phrase gar nicht, which translates to "not at all". If you removed it and just said tat nicht weh, it would simply mean "did not hurt". gar strongly emphasizes the negation.
How would I say who the injection didn't hurt, for example, "The injection didn't hurt me"?
You would add a dative pronoun, in this case mir. The verb wehtun takes a dative object to show who is feeling the pain. The sentence would become: Die Spritze tat mir gar nicht weh.
Since tat comes from tun (to do), could I use machte here instead?
No, you cannot. While both machen and tun translate to "to do" or "to make" in English, wehtun is a fixed vocabulary word (literally "to do pain"). You cannot swap tun for machen in this compound verb.
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