No m'agrada el negre; jo prefereixo el blanc.

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Breakdown of No m'agrada el negre; jo prefereixo el blanc.

• em: me
• agradar: to like
• preferir: to prefer

Questions & Answers about No m'agrada el negre; jo prefereixo el blanc.

Why is it m'agrada instead of a form that literally means I like?

Because Catalan agradar works differently from English to like.

In Catalan, the thing that is liked is the grammatical subject, and the person who experiences the liking is shown with an indirect object pronoun.

So:

• No m'agrada el negre literally works like Black is not pleasing to me
• m' = to me
• agrada = is pleasing
• el negre = black / the color black

This is why Catalan does not use a structure like I like black word-for-word.

What does m' mean, and why is there an apostrophe?

m' is the shortened form of em, the weak pronoun meaning to me.

Before a verb beginning with a vowel, em becomes m':

• m'agrada
• m'estima
• m'interessa

Before a consonant, you normally keep the full form:

• em molesta
• em sembla

So m'agrada is just em agrada contracted for sound and spelling.

Why is it agrada and not or some other first-person form?