In short

English makes the person the subject: “I am cold”, “my head hurts”, “you deserve a prize”. Modern Hebrew often does the opposite. It leaves the person out of the subject slot entirely and marks them with the inflected preposition ל־ (le-) — לי (li), לך (lecha), לו (lo), לה (la) — the very forms you drilled in lesson 17. The subject of the sentence is the thing: the cold, the head, the prize. So “I’m cold” is קר לי (kar li), literally “cold to-me”, and “my head hurts” is כואב לי הראש (koev li ha-rosh), literally “hurts to-me the-head”.

These are called dative-experiencer sentences: the experiencer (the person who feels something) sits in the dative ל־, and the predicate agrees not with the person but with the theme — the thing felt, lacked, or deserved. Get that one fact right and the whole family falls into place.

The rule

• The experiencer is not the subject — mark it with inflected ל־. Do not put the person in the subject slot. Say קר לי (kar li) “I’m cold”, not אני קר; מגיע לו כבוד (magia lo kavod) “he deserves respect”, not הוא מגיע כבוד. The person rides ל־, inflected for who they are: לי/לך/לו/לה/לנו/לכם/להם (li/lecha/lo/la/lanu/lachem/lahem). This is exactly the singular-base paradigm of lesson 17 — reuse it, there is nothing new to memorize here.

• The predicate agrees with the theme, never with the experiencer. The grammatical subject is the thing, so gender and number are read off it. כואב לי הראש (koev li ha-rosh) — הראש (rosh, “head”) is masculine, so the verb is masculine כואב. But כואבת לי הבטן (koevet li ha-beten) — הבטן (beten, “belly”) is feminine, so the verb switches to כואבת. The “me” (לי) is identical in both; only the body part moves the verb.

• Sensation verb כואב (root כ-א-ב, pa’al) — “to hurt/ache”. Body-part complaints use כואב and agree with the body part: כואב לי הגב (koev li ha-gav, masc), כואבת לי הבטן (koevet li ha-beten, fem), כואבות לי הרגליים (koavot li ha-raglayim, “my legs hurt”, feminine plural). The word order is typically predicate → ל־ → theme, but you may also front the theme for emphasis: הראש כואב לי (ha-rosh koev li) says the same thing.

• Adjective sensations — קר / חם / נעים / קשה. Feelings of temperature and comfort are dative too: קר לי (kar li, “I’m cold”), חם לה (cham la, “she’s hot”), נעים לי (na’im li, “I’m comfortable / it’s pleasant for me”), קשה לי (kashe li, “it’s hard for me”). Here there is usually no explicit theme to agree with, so the predicate simply freezes in the masculine singular — קר, חם, נעים stay invariant no matter who the experiencer is.

• Deontic מגיע (root נ-ג-ע, hif’il) — “to deserve / have coming”. “You deserve X” is מגיע + לך + X: מגיע לך פרס (magia lecha pras, “you deserve a prize”). Again the verb tracks the theme: מגיע לך פרס (pras masc) but מגיעה לך הפסקה (magi’a lecha hafsaka, “you deserve a break”, hafsaka fem).

• חסר (root ח-ס-ר, pa’al) — “to be lacking / missing”. חסר לי כסף (chaser li kesef, “I’m short of money”) — the person lacking is לי, and חסר agrees with the missing thing: חסר לי כסף (kesef masc), חסרה לי סבלנות (chasera li savlanut, “I have no patience”, savlanut fem). The same verb gives the everyday way to say “I miss you”: את חסרה לי (at chasera li) to a woman, אתה חסר לי (ata chaser li) to a man — here the person missed is the theme and the verb agrees with them.

• Frozen idioms — נראה לי, בא לי, נמאס לי. נראה לי (nir’e li, “it seems to me / I think”) is the everyday way to say “I think”; treat it as a fixed unit. Colloquially, בא לי (ba li) means “I feel like / I’m in the mood for” — בא לי קפה (ba li kafe, “I feel like a coffee”) — and נמאס לי (nim’as li) means “I’m fed up”: נמאס לי מהעבודה (nim’as li me-ha-avoda, “I’m fed up with work”). בא לי and נמאס לי are colloquial — perfect for speech, but keep them out of formal writing.

• Past tense uses impersonal היה. To put a dative-experiencer sentence in the past, add the copula היה (haya) and keep the person on ל־: היה לי קר (haya li kar, “I was cold”), היה לי כיף (haya li kef, “I had fun”). With no theme, היה stays masculine singular. With a body-part theme the past verb itself agrees: כאב לי הראש (ka’av li ha-rosh) but כאבה לי הבטן (ka’ava li ha-beten).

Forms & patterns

The frame — Predicate + inflected ל־ (experiencer) + Theme (= subject):

The experiencer ל־ (from lesson 17 — reuse, don’t re-learn):

כואב agrees with the body part (gender + number of the theme):

Adjective/impersonal predicates — no theme, so frozen masculine singular:

Past tense — add impersonal היה (haya); with a theme the past verb agrees:

Examples

Common mistakes

• אני קר (for “I’m cold”) -> קר לי (kar li) - אני קר means “I’m a cold, unfeeling person”; the sensation “I’m cold” is impersonal קר לי, with the person on ל־.
• אני חם (for “I’m hot”) -> חם לי (cham li) - same trap as קר: temperature is dative, never a “to be” subject.
• כואבת לי הראש -> כואב לי הראש (koev li ha-rosh) - ראש is masculine, so the verb is masculine כואב; agree with the body part, not with “me”.
• כואב לי הבטן -> כואבת לי הבטן (koevet li ha-beten) - בטן is feminine, so the verb must be כואבת; the predicate tracks the theme’s gender.
• אני מגיע פרס -> מגיע לי פרס (magia li pras) - “deserve” is dative: the person is לי and מגיע agrees with פרס, the thing deserved.
• אני חסר כסף -> חסר לי כסף (chaser li kesef) - “I lack money” puts the person on ל־; חסר agrees with כסף.
• הייתי קר (for “I was cold”) -> היה לי קר (haya li kar) - the past keeps the person dative and uses impersonal masculine היה, not a first-person “I was”.

Tips

• One reflex fixes the whole family: the person is not the subject. Put them on inflected ל־ (לי/לך/לו/לה) and let the predicate agree with the thing.
• For body parts, choose כואב / כואבת / כואבות by the gender and number of the part: כואב לי הגב (m), כואבת לי הבטן (f), כואבות לי העיניים (f pl).
• When there is no thing to agree with — just “it’s cold / hard / nice for me” — the predicate freezes masculine singular: קר לי, קשה לי, נעים לי.
• Never translate “I’m cold/hot” as אני קר / אני חם: those describe a cold or hot person, not the feeling. Use קר לי / חם לי.
• Past = impersonal היה + person on ל־: היה לי קר, היה לי כיף. With a body-part theme the past verb itself agrees: כאב לי הראש vs כאבה לי הבטן.
• Word order is flexible: כואב לי הראש and הראש כואב לי both work; fronting the body part just topicalizes it.
• בא לי (ba li, “I feel like”) and נמאס לי (nim’as li, “I’m fed up”) are colloquial — natural in speech, but avoid them in formal writing.
• נראה לי (nir’e li) is the everyday “I think / it seems to me”; the clause that follows it (נראה לי ש…) works like any complement clause.