Verbs like Gustar
I. Intro: Gustar
A mí me gusta estudiar el español, ¿y a ti? ¿Te gusta también? We all know that “me gusta” means “I like it,” but we may also remember our Spanish teacher telling us that technically, “gustar” doesn’t translate to “to like.” Spanish has no verb “to like.” So, which is it?The short answer is: both. Gustar loosely means “to like, ”but it doesn’t translate literally that way. The actual meaning of gustar is “to be pleasing.” So when we say “algo me gusta,” what we’re really saying is “something is pleasing to me.”
As we learned in a previous lesson, any time we say “to me” or “for me,” we are using the indirect object. This means that when we use gustar, we are always using an indirect object to refer “to whom” the thing is pleasing.