Using gustar
I wrote a sentence and got it wrong.
"Does she like animals?" "¿Les gusta los animales?"
Why would it be "Le gusta los animales."? Wouldn't les mean animals?
2 Answers
The animals(plural:hence gustan)are pleasing TO HER. She likes animals. Singular indirect object pronoun.
Le gustan los animales.
One of the most discussed grammatical topics on this forum. Shelly is right. The animals are pleasing her, or to phrase it so the meaning carries over into English better, the animals are pleasing to her. In spanish we generally do not say that we (or she) like something but rather we say something pleases us. "She" is not the subject of the sentence, that is, not the one doing the pleasing. The subject of the sentence is the "animals" and the verb is "pleasing". Therefore the person being pleased is the indirect object and the indirect object pronoun "le" is used.
