A la mare li agrada beure te.

the mother

Breakdown of A la mare li agrada beure te.

• agradar: to like
• a: to
• li: her

Questions & Answers about A la mare li agrada beure te.

Why does the sentence start with A la mare?

Because agradar is built differently from English to like.

In Catalan, the person who experiences the liking is usually introduced with a:

• A la mare = to the mother / mother

So A la mare li agrada beure te is structured more like:

• To mother, drinking tea is pleasing

That is why a appears before la mare.

What does li mean here?

Li is an indirect object pronoun meaning to him / to her / to you (formal).

In this sentence, it refers back to la mare:

• A la mare ... li ... = to mother ... to her ...

So li and a la mare point to the same person.

Why do we need both A la mare and li? Isn’t that repetitive?

Yes, from an English point of view it can feel repetitive, but in Catalan this is very normal.

This is called clitic doubling. Catalan often uses:

• the full phrase: A la mare
• and the pronoun: li

together in the same sentence.

So this is a standard pattern, especially with verbs like agradar:

• A la mare li agrada...
• Al noi li interessa...
• A la professora li encanta...

You can think of li as an expected grammatical marker, even when the full noun is already stated.