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Using the Verb "Gustar"

The simplest way to think about the verb "gustar" is that it means "to like." You should therefore have no trouble translating the following sentence:

While this is not untrue, it's not really accurate either. Taking a closer look at the example sentence, you should notice some problems.

In the English version, things are as we would expect them to be; a subject is followed by a verb, which is followed by a direct object. The Spanish version does not follow this pattern however. First of all, you should notice that if the subject is "I", gustar ought to be conjugated "gusto" not "gusta." Secondly, "Me" is not the subject but rather an object pronoun. Even if we tried to make it the subject, the translation would sound like a caveman talking ("Me like the book").

Something's not quite right with the notion that "gustar" means "to like." If "Me" isn't the subject, what is? Clearly "gusta" is the verb, which means that "El libro" is actually our subject. If that's the case, a more literal translation would look something like this:

The book __(?)__ me.

What goes in the blank? Well, the idea of liking a book is not incorrect; it's just that the subject and object have been switched around so instead of me liking the book, the book pleases me.

Case closed. Mystery solved. Right? Not yet. We're still oversimplifying things because in this case "Me" happens to be an indirect object pronoun (IOP) not a direct object pronoun (DOP). Hopefully you remember that a direct object answers the questions "who?" or "what?" receives the verb, whereas an indirect object answers the questions "to whom?" or "for whom?" Since "Me" is an IOP rather than a DOP we need to include either a "to" or a "for" in our translation:

All of this IOP talk raises a few questions. Why do we care whether the object pronoun is a DOP or an IOP? And wouldn't it be easier just to treat "gustar" like a reflexive verb? Let's take a look at all of our Spanish pronoun options:

You'll notice that it really doesn't matter which chart we pull our object pronoun from until we get to the bottom row (third-person). But if we are talking about the likes or dislikes of other people we need to use the correct indirect object pronoun.

Los gustan los videos.
Se gustan los videos.
Les gustan los videos.

Also when conjugating a reflexive verb, the reflexive pronoun needs to agree with the verb conjugation (e.g. "Me baño") which is not the case when we use "gustar."

Having learned all that, our new translation, "The book is pleasing to me," is a literal one but it's not a very useful one. It would be far more meaningful to say, "I like the book." This brings us right back to where we started and explains why you were probably taught that "gustar" means "to like."

So why bother learning that "gustar" actually means "to be pleasing"?

We need to know how to use "gustar" properly when translating from English to Spanish. Consider:

You like computers.

Armed with the knowledge that "gustar" is better translated as "to be pleasing," we can make a quick transformation before we translate. Our direct object ("computers") becomes our new subject and our subject ("you") becomes an indirect object:

Computers are pleasing to you.

which in Spanish would be written as:

Las computadoras te gustan.

or better yet,

Te gustan las computadoras.

Please note that "gustar" has been correctly conjugated as "gustan" to agree with our (plural) subject, "computers."

Some more examples:

There are a few more issues about the verb "gustar" to review. First of all how would you translate the following sentence?

Clearly, someone likes the car, but who? Just using "Le" doesn't help; it could mean "him," or "her," or even "you" (in the Usted form). How do Spanish-speaking people understand each other in these situations? Quite often they will add a few words for clarification:

The "A ella" and the "le" are actually accomplishing the same thing in this sentence. They're both indirect objects but one is an object and one is an object pronoun. We would never use both in English but it happens quite often in Spanish. Here's another example of adding words to a "gustar" sentence:

A mí me gustan las películas.

Once again the "A mi" and the "me" have the same function in the sentence, but this time it's for a different reason. Unlike "le," the "me" could not be confused for anything other than "to me." In this situation the "A mi" has been added for emphasis rather than clarification. The speaker of this sentence wants to emphasize his/her opinion in contrast to other opinions: "In my opinion..."

You may have noticed that in all of this translating, we've haven't used a form of "gustar" other than "gusta" and "gustan." This is not a coincidence and it makes sense when you think about it. Due to our sentence structure of a direct object being transformed into a subject, there's no reason to conjugate "gustar" for anything other than a singular object or plural objects. But this raises an interesting question; what if you want to tell a friend that someone likes them?

In that case you would conjugate "gustar" a different way:

However, it's important to note that (much like in the middle sentence above) when we use "gustar" in this way, the connotation is not a friendly relationship but a physical attraction. Therefore this conjugation of "gustar" should be used very carefully.

The expressions "caer mal" and "caer bien" are much safer to use when talking about friendships. (You're literally saying that someone"falls on you well," or "falls on you poorly.")

While we're on the subject of "gustar," there are a number of other verbs which work similarly:

Notice "disgustar" is the opposite of "gustar." We have a similar verb in English which works the same as "gustar" in Spanish. It may help to think about "disgustar" when dealing with "gustar."

You disgust me.
(You are disgusting to me.)
Tú me disgustas.

And it should be pointed out that "gustar" works not only in the present-tense, but in other tenses (and moods) as well: