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- "Es geht ihr gut."
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Yes, it's an expression and it's very common.
"Es geht ihr gut" - literally this means something like 'It goes good for her'
It's a way of asking or talking about health or mood. "Wie geht es dir?" means "How are you" - you could answer "Es geht mir gut" meaning "I'm fine" or "I'm well".
The structure is 'Es geht' + dative pronoun (Not sure if you will have learnt all of these yet, but they are mir, dir, ihm, ihr, euch, uns, Ihnen, ihnen) followed by the adjective you want to use.
Yes, that would work. I think it's better to include the pronoun if you are talking generally about how things are going for someone, but you would use just es geht gut if you are talking about how well something is going e.g. Wie geht das Geschäft? (How's business?) => Es geht gut.
Also, it's quite common to hear this phrase without the pronouns in informal speech:
e.g. Wie geht's? - Gut, danke.
This is just an abbreviation of the full phrase Wie geht es dir?, and has the same meaning.
Hey, according to this there is a little mistake in the dative forms you gave. http://www.gramatica-alemana.es/gramatica/pronombres-personales.php
"Impersonal verbs
Another type of construction in which what would be the subject of an English sentence is in the dative case in a German sentence are the so-called impersonal verbs. These are verbs in which the grammatical subject of the sentence is "es", a non-specific "it". We have met two of the most common impersonal verbs already:
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Es tut mir Leid. ("I'm sorry.")
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Wie geht es Ihnen? ("How are you?")
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Mir geht es gut. ("I'm very well.")"
It's interesting that you refer to dative verbs as impersonal. Because it feels like the speaker is taking a step back when they use this phrasing, like they're showing that it's just their impression and they're not completely certain that it's true:
Es tut mir Leid. ("I'm sorry.")
(Es) It (tut) seems to be that (mir) for me there is (Leid) sorrow.
Wie geht es Ihnen? ("How are you?")
(Wie) How (geht es) does it seem to go (ihnen) for you?
Mir geht es gut. ("I'm very well.")
(Mir) To me (geht) it seems to go (es) for things in general (gut) well.
And then for the original sentence:
Es geht ihr gut. ("She feels well.")
(Es geht) It seems to go (ihr) for her (gut) well.
You have no idea how much your example helped me. I read the sentence and heard it like ten times and couldn't get it. I got it correct just because of luck. Now, after reading your example, I compared the sentence to Spanish and understood better how to use this construction. I hope I can help some other people:
"Ich fühle mich gut" would be something like "Me siento -yo mismo- bien", or in English I think it would be something like "I feel -myself- good". It is like if you repeat or "double-emphasize" who is feeling good. So I think that "They feel good" should be "Es geht Ihnen gut". I hope somebody can correct me if I'm wrong.
This is the way I understood it works. However, as some people have said, we haven't studied dative forms, which is why we feel it is hard. But the good thing about the comments is that you can have a deeper understanding. Thanks, community!
Thank you very much! Even though I'm not a native English speaker whenever I see an "i" I tend to capitalize it. Duolingo has corrected me many times because I tend to write "Ihr" and "Ich" even if they are in the middle of the sentence. Guess I should check my answer before pressing enter =).
And thanks again for the examples; they're really helpful.
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It seems to me that this could also mean, "It suits her well," as in clothing or a general situation. is that true?