'A mi 'and 'yo'
I've seen different forms of this, but I don't understand the difference.
Whe you say 'A mi me gusta ~', the 'A mi' translates as "I", doesn't it? But the word for "I" is "yo" in Spanish, and thus can't be the noun.
So how am I supposed to understand this? Is the original sentance " Yo a mi me gusta~"? Or is there something I'm missing?
Also, how would I differentiate if the sentence started with 'a mi' or 'yo'? I'm kind of confused here because they both seem to mean the same thing, and both can be hidden (like (a mi) me gusta, etc.).
Could you explain this to me please? Thank you!
3 Answers
Whe you say 'A mi me gusta ~', the 'A mi' translates as "I", doesn't it?
No, not really! Sometimes a good translation requires a complete rewrite of a sentence so it sounds better in the target language. "A mí" translates literally as "(to) me", so being faithful to the structure of the Spanish sentence, you'd get "Something it pleases me", which is not the idea way to express it in English, but it is more useful to understand how "gustar" works.
When you say something like "[Yo] Pienso que...", you are the agent, the 'doer', the one who thinks, so another person will say "Yo también", meaning that he also thinks the same thing.
When you say "A mí me gusta eso", you are not doing anything, you are not choosing anything; you are being affected (whether you like it or not) by "eso", which is the agent of this sentence, it is the only thing that is doing something: it is affecting you (in a positive way), it is pleasing you. If you want to agree with that statement, you'll have to say that you are also positively affected by it: "eso" also pleases me.
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On really big difference is that "yo" is a subject pronoun and "a mí" is a preposition and an object pronoun. It is the difference between "I" and "to me" in English.
