What is the difference between Gustar/gusta and Gustaria
Just wanted to know for school next year.
6 Answers
Your approach will not get any anywhere, believe me. Each of the verbs has no less than 51 different forms, and several hundred if you add attached pronouns. Multiply that by over 10,000 verbs and learning Spanish becomes an impossible task. And yet, some foreigners become fluent within a year... avoiding the route you are trying to follow. But if you insist:
gustar = to be pleasing (a less literal but better translation: to like)
gusta = is pleasing to me/you/him/her... (a less literal but better translation: I/you/he/she... likes)
gustaría = would be pleasing to me/you/him/her... (a less literal but better translation: I/you/he/she... would like)
?Gustar (to please) ? Infinitive form of the verb
?Gusta (it pleases somebody) ? 3rd person singular of the present indicative
?Gustaría (it would please somebody) ? 1st or 3rd person singular of the conditional
Note: Although I have translated the verb "gustar" as "to please" (in order to remain more faithful to syntactic structure) it is also often translated as "to like" (in order to remain more faithful to semantic meaning).
A short grammar (if you are interested):
When you look up verbs in a dictionary they are generally presented in what is called their infinitive form. The infinitive is considered an impersonal form because it carries no inflection that would indicate who the person is that performs the action.
In English, you can note this in the following sentence.
It pleases me to jump.
If we extract the verb (to) jump out of the previous sentence you will note that there is no indication of who is doing the jumping. This form (often but not always accompanied by the marker "to") is what we call the infinitive form of the verb.
In Spanish, the infinitive form of a verb is represented by one of three possible suffixes (word endings): -ar, -er, -ir. Notice then, that the verb form "gustar" carries this ending and is therefore the infinitive form of the verb. This would make it somewhat analogous to the verb "to please" in English
Often in English (and always in Spanish) verbs change their endings or are inflected when they are used in one of their personal forms (i.e. forms which indicate who performed the action). Again we can go back to the sentence above and extract the verb "to please" out of the sentences along with its accompanying pronoun:
it pleases
Notice that in English, the verb is inflected (in the third-person singular of the present indicative) by adding an -s to the end of the verb. We know who ("it") is "doing the pleasing" because of the presence of this pronoun. English, is not a very heavily inflected language due largely to word order restrictions and the extensive use of subject pronouns. Spanish, by comparison, is a much more heavily inflected language which often omits subject pronouns so that knowing each inflected form becomes vital to understanding (among other things) who is performing the action. Despite the fact that many verb forms are not inflected in English, it is still necessary that we use the appropriate inflectional endings (conjugations) when necessary. For example, it would not do to make a statement about the present using any of the following conjugations:
?I likes your smile. [ungrammatical]
?He like my smile. [ungrammatical]
?I liked his smile [wrong tense]
When we look back to our original sentence in English
We can construct a similar sentence in Spanish as follows:
Here, the inflectional ending "-a" in "gusta" tells who (it) does the pleasing; when the pleasing is done (in the present), and whether the act of pleasing can be considered a declaration of fact or a hypothetical situation (declarative in nature). The inflected ending, therefore, tells us that the verb is in the 3rd person singular of the present indicative.
Well, I initially intended this post to be a brief handling of the subject and see that it has probably gotten well out of hand. Instead of describing the conditional to you, I think that it might be better just to leave you with a few links that might help you to study and practice.
Verb Conjugation Trainer (for practicing)
SpanishDicts conjugation page for Gustar (if you are unfamiliar with a given verb tense or mood that is listed, you can click on it and it will send you to a page with a reference article describing its usage).
Gustar is the infinitive of the verb, gusta is third person/thing congugation of the verb and gustaría is the conditional tense as in I would like.
"Gustar" is a verb meaning "to like".
"Gusta" is the third person singular in present tense.
Me gusta el vestido. I like the dress.
"Gustan" is the third person plural in the present tense.
Le gustan los zapatos. She likes the shoes.
"Gustaría" means "would like" - it is in the conditional.
Me gustaría el cafe. I would like coffee.
Good question. I hope I helped 
Gustar can be kind of special.
In response to another thread about the "peculiar" nature of "gustar", I listed about two dozen English verbs in response to a similar question that behave the same way (can be used with the same syntactic constructions). With more time (which I have) and the motivation (which I don't have), I could probably list several dozen more.
Unless by "special" you mean "less common", there is nothing "special" about them. French and Italian (Romance languages) have exactly the same constructions, as does Japanese (by no stretch of the imagination, a Romance language).
The problem only exists because English speakers start off with a phrase such as "I like X." in mind and, then, are, disappointed/confused/frustrated with the Spanish translation because the subject/object have changed places.
In light of a reply posted by Lazarus, it should be, perhaps, noted that the typical English and Spanish constructions differ grammatically. In Spanish "gustar" is an intransitive verb thus, "me gusta" is best translated (to preserve the syntax) as "it is pleasing to me" ("me" being the dative of interest, not the direct object). In English one could say either "It pleases me (direct object)" or "It is pleasing to me (indirect object)".In either case, the grammatical subject is whatever does the pleasing; not the person experiencing the pleasure.
