So about a...

Question

So I was working on a Spanish project and I was looking things up and I came across a new thing. So I found out that in order to answer the question,"¿Qué le gusta hacer?" you would say, "A él/ella le gusta..." but that 'a' there... I'm not sure as to what that is. I don't recall learning it and I just want know what it is and if/when I need to use it for future reference.

Answer 1

The "a" here means "to"

A él- to him

A ella- to her

Gustar does not work like the English word like.

It works like the English phrase to be pleasing to.

With gustar, what is pleasing is the subject, and that is what the verb gustar is conjugated to.

What is being pleased is the indirect object, and when not an actual indirect object pronoun, is introduced with "a".

A Juan le gusta nadar.

To Juan (to him) it is pleasing to swim.

In Spanish, it is customary to use a redundant indirect object pronoun, here le, and in this case, where the indirect object (Juan) precedes the verb, it is actually required.

A él le gusta nadar. To him (to him) it is pleasing to swim.

Here the le remains required, the a él, which replaces a Juan, simply serves as clarification or emphasis, and can be dropped if not needed. Clarification could be if you were talking about a female and male, and clarifying that it is him (not her, who also could be le)

So you can simply say "Le gusta nadar". But you cannot say "A Juan gusta nadar" or "a él gusta nadar" The le is needed and it sounds horrible without it.

The verb gustar is conjugated to the subject, nadar, to swim. To swim is pleasing to him.

So:

( A mí) me gusta nadar. To swim is pleasing to me. You would not conjugate gustar to yo, ie use gusto.

There are many easily searched links to verbs that work like gustar.

Thanks a lot! This was really helpful. - averycoldwinter, Nov 26, 2016

De nada. :) - bosquederoble, Nov 26, 2016