¿Gusta o gustan?
¿Te gusta Madrid?
Bueno, es que en general las ciudades grandes no me gusta mucho.
A mí, las playas con mucha gente no me gusta nada.
A mí tampoco, la verdad.
Hey! Now I'm trying to understand gustar, but I'm stuck with this type of sentences. Take the first example, it says "...I don't like big cities", which is plural. But the verb "gustar" is not before "las ciudades grandes" should we always look at the subject? same thing with the second example. "las playas con mucho gente" so I'm stuck here, thank you!
Edit: I forgot to say that bold gusta's are my guesses, so one or all of them may be gustan instead of gusta..
4 Answers
The subject is the subject, I would choose "gustan" for both.
I am not the only one- see here:
http://www.slideshare.net/albatrosmillor/qu-te-gusta-15855906
- ¿Gusta o gustan?1 - Me gusta muchísimo vivir en el centro. - ¿Sí?. A mí me gustan más los barrios tranquilos.2 - ¿Quieres ir en moto? ¿Vamos a dar un paseo? - ¡Huy! No, gracias. A mí me gusta más andar.3 ¿Te gusta la comida mexicana? - Sí, muchísimo.4 - A mí, las playas con mucha gente no me gustan nada. - A mí tampoco, la verdad.5 - ¿Te gusta Madrid? - No mucho, a mi las ciudades grandes no me gustan mucho.
Now in a sentence such as (found on the internet):
En ciudades grandes no me gusta vivir
This is the same as: no me gusta vivir en ciudades grandes
Vivir is the subject, not ciudades, so it is gusta. But that is not the case with your sentences.
The trick is to remember that gustar doesn't mean 'to like' but rather 'to be pleasing to'.
Me gusta - (it) is pleasing to me.
Me gustan - (they) are pleasing to me.
And as Bosque said, the subject is the subject no matter where it's placed in relation to the verb.
So just try saying the sentence using either 'is' or 'are' pleasing and there will only be one option.
'The cities' are pleasing.
'The beaches' are pleasing.
Me 'gustaN'.
"Me gusta" means that somethings makes you fell good and there you have the subject.
"Te gusta Madrid?
in some way it could be "Does Madrid produce pleasure to you?" (in a good way, i mean if you want to visit it.)
so it is gusta
"Bueno, es que en general las ciudades grandes no me gustan mucho."
Do big cities make you fell good? (another example)
No, las grandes ciudades no me gustan mucho.
in this case its gustan
Espero que esto te ayude un poco. Si no, lo borro por complicarme la vida jaja. saludos
Yes, you should look to the subject which is plural in both cases. So you need gustan.
I like to think of gustar in the following way. The cities give pleasure to me. So you can see that the verb needs to be in the third person plural, gustan.
By the way, the construction of gustar as "the subject gives pleasure to someone (the IO)" does a better job of explaining why we use indirect object pronouns in these constructions. I often see people explaining gustar as "It pleases me." This isn't the best way IMHO to explain to English speakers why the verb takes indirect object pronouns instead of direct object pronouns. "It pleases her" would imply that the pronoun should be a direct object (la) instead of an indirect object (le) because the recipient is directly getting pleased by the subject rather than being given pleasure or enjoyment or something which makes the recipient an IO.
With "the subject gives pleasure to me" it is much easier to see that the unstated "pleasure" is the direct object (that never shows up in the sentence) and that the indirect object pronouns need to be used for the recipient of the pleasure: me, te, le, nos and les.
By thinking about "verbs like gustar" in this fashion one can also see that they have a lot in common with other verbs like decir, escritar, dar, reglar, mostrar, etc. These are verbs of communication or exchange where there is usually an implied direct object even if it is unstated. Therefore "He told her" becomes (Él) le dijo and not (Él) la dijo because there is always an implied "something" that was told.
Anyway, I digress.
