Please help me to understand something that I have found confusing.

Question

Hello to everybody.

I came across the following sentence in the word of the day thread yesterday. Nunca me han gustado mucho los perros.

The translation given is, 'I have never much liked dogs' and several different translators all give this same response,

The confusion I have is that when I tried to translate this myself I read it as, nunca (never) me (i) Han gustado (they have liked) mucho los perros (much the dogs) in other words, the dogs have never liked me much. I have tried to work out where I have gone wrong and suspect that it is a simple mistake that is staring right at me but just can't get it.

Thankyou for any help and advice you can give.

Answer 1

It's the verb gustar; it means ' to please'.

Nunca me han gustado los perros. -- Dogs have never pleased me. In English we say: I have never liked dogs.

Thankyou, of course it is. I knew it would be something simple. - AndyTFS, Nov 20, 2015

Good job. - Daniela2041, Nov 20, 2015

Thanks Dani. - annierats, Nov 21, 2015

Short, simple, and excellent. - HackerKing, Nov 22, 2015