"gusto" verses "me gusta"
Why do you say "Me gusta bailar" instead of "Gusto bailar".
2 Answers
Hi MaryJune and Welcome to the Spanishdict forum!
There are several threads on this subject if you do a quick search.
The short answer is that the verb "gustar" is generally used impersonally so that the subject of the sentence is the source of pleasure or affability, and the indirect object describes who is pleased by this source (i.e. who receives pleasure from dancing).
In the sentence "Me gusta bailar," dancing (bailar) is the source of pleasure and therefore is the subject of the sentence. Meanwhile the person who finds this activity pleasurable is the speaker ("Me"). So that "Me gusta bailar" might be more literally translated to "Dancing is pleasing to me (or if you wish to further conserve sentence structure: To me, it is pleasing to dance)."
"Gusto bailar" on the other hand would result in a somewhat nonsensical utterance.
One way to keep straight how to use the verb "gustar" is to consider how a similar verb in English works: Disgust (notice how both "gustar" and "disgust" contain the root "gust").
If you pay attention you will notice that in sentences that use the word "disgust," the subject of the sentence is actually the cause of displeasure rather than the recipient. Compare the structure of the following two sentences:
In this instance bailar is the subject and the person is the object. Spanish dictionary suggests translating gustar as to be pleasing to. Therefore in this case a direct translation to English would be dancing is pleasing to me. But in English we can just say I like dancing.
