No thanks to DuoLingo (and some thanks to a search that found a post on Quora), I finally made a grammatical connection in German, and it amuses me.
- “es tut mir leid” is always translated as “I’m sorry.” Obviously not quite a literal translation, otherwise it’d be “ich bin something”…
- “mir tun die Beine weh” is translated as “my legs hurt”. “I something the legs something?” Hmm.
- “Ich habe viel zu tun” is translated as “I have a lot to do.” This makes some sense, but there’s “tun” again.
As it turns out, “tun” is a plural form of “do”, and “tut” is the singular. But it’s apparently kind of a specialized “do” unlike the more general one in English; in German you’re more likely to “make” stuff (like homework or yoga, or even fun) than to “do” it.
“Es tut mir leid” is “it does me sorrow.” Which just makes me think of can has cheezburger. “It do me a sad.”
Even better, “weh” is apparently “ouch,” and so “mir tun die Beine weh” is “I do the legs ouch.” (You could also say the simpler “meine Beine tun weh”, my legs do ouch… but of course that’s not what DuoLingo teaches.)