Valakas said: In portuguese we have two verbs that separate the different meanings of the verb "to be" / "sein". One is used to say the feelings, place, situation, feelings we are in - I am here, i am (feeling) hot, i am married, etc. All these use the verb "estar". The other is used when speaking about the thing / person itself, it's characteristics - I am hot, i am a human, i am kind, etc, and for these we use "ser". It's the same in spanish for those more familiar with it.



Perhaps it's something similar in german with the mir ist and ich bin? Click to expand...

Ob er kommt oder zuhause bleibt ist egal = Whether he will come or stay at home doesn’t matter.

Ob er kommt oder zuhause bleibt ist mir egal. = Whether he will come or stay at home doesn’t matter to me = I don’t care whether he will come or stay at home.

( The only reason why Es ist kalt cannot be shortened to *ist kalt is that a German sentence cannot start with a verb unless it is a question or an imperative.)





I am also skeptical that this should be compared. The predicateis the same in both sentencesand. It is the adverbialwhich changes the meaning of the sentence.The addition of an adverbial dative of the person changes to basic meaning of the sentence from a statement the objective state of affairs to a subjective statement about the person’s condition, feelings or opinions. This applies also to sentence with an explicit subject. The fact thatdoes not have an “true” subject is circumstantial and not essential to constructs under discussion here. E.g.(Note: In both cases, the clauseconstitutes the subject of the main sentence.)Hence, the sentenceshould be analysed as a subjective rendering of the sentencewhich is a statement about the state of the world and not a statement about particular object or person. This becomes clearer, if you use the equivalent formulationBy contrast, the sentenceis a statement about an concrete object or person and not about the world in general, i.e.