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Questions & Answers about Et fa mal el braç?
What does et mean here?
Et is the unstressed object pronoun meaning to you.
So the structure is roughly:
- et = to you
- fa mal = hurts / causes pain
- el braç = the arm
A very literal way to think of the sentence is:
Does the arm hurt to you?
That is not natural English, but it helps explain the Catalan structure.
Why is it et and not tu?
Because tu is a subject pronoun (you), while et is an object pronoun (to you).
In this sentence, you are not the grammatical subject. The thing doing the hurting is el braç.
So:
- tu = you as the subject
- et = you / to you as an object
Catalan uses the object pronoun here because the idea is literally closer to the arm hurts to you than to you hurt the arm.
What does fa mal mean exactly?