Did you know that gustar is not the most common ‘verb like gustar’?
Before I tell you what the most common verb in this category is, I’ll explain the question a little further and how I discovered the answer.
Spanish verbs can be grouped into 3 basic structures: normal, reflexive and ‘verbs like gustar‘.
It seems a shame that this third category doesn’t have a better name. But, nonetheless, this verb structure is extremely useful and will be the focus of the rest of the post.
As an aside, this verb category likely gets its English name due to ‘gustar’ being the most commonly used verb to introduce this topic in Spanish classrooms.
So how do ‘verbs like gustar‘ work?
How to form ‘verbs like gustar’
At first look, the structure of these verbs appears strange but we actually have this sentence structure in English as well.
Two examples in English would be:
It occurred to me…
The idea seems strange to me…
In Spanish, the structure is no different. All you have to do is mentally switch the action of the verb onto yourself (or whoever is receiving the action of the verb).
A few examples with gustar:
English: I like the movie.
Literal translation: The movie is pleasing to me (or more specifically ‘to me the movie is pleasing’).
Español: Me gusta la película.
English: I don’t like cheese.
Literal translation: To me cheese is not pleasing.
Español: No me gusta el queso.
If you want to apply these verbs to someone other than yourself, you need to use one of the following ‘indirect object pronouns’:
Me – Me.
Te – You.
Le – Him / her / formal you.
Nos – Us.
Os – You-all.
Les – Them / formal you-all.
Here are a few examples with these indirect objects pronouns in action:
English: Do you like this idea?
Literal translation: To you is this idea pleasing?
Español: ¿Te gusta esta idea?
English: We like speaking.
Literal translation: To us speaking is pleasing.
Español: Nos gusta hablar.
For more details on how to use this verb structure refer back to the podcast on ‘How To Use Verbs Like Gustar To Express Your Ideas’. In that episode, I go into a lot more depth on how to use these types of verbs.
The present tense conjugations for verbs like gustar
When it comes to conjugating any verb like gustar, they all follow a similar pattern.
The full conjugations for gustar are as follows:
| English | Español |
|---|---|
| It is pleasing to me | (A mí) me gusta |
| It is pleasing to you | (A ti) te gusta |
| It is pleasing to him / to her | (A él / a ella) le gusta |
| It is pleasing to you (formal) | (A usted) le gusta |
| It is pleasing to us | (A nosotros) nos gusta |
| It is pleasing to you-all | (A vosotros) os gusta |
| It is pleasing to them | (A ellos / a ellas) les gusta |
| It is pleasing to you-all (formal) | (A ustedes) les gusta |
Note that the additional pronoun phrases in brackets (a mí, a ti etc.) are optional except in the case where we need to specify a third person such as “to him”, “to her” or “to my friend”.
For example:
English: My friend likes it.
Literal translation: To my friend it is pleasing.
Español: A mi amigo le gusta.
Note, however, we can drop the phrase ‘a mi amigo’ and simply say ‘le gusta’ if we already know from context that we are talking about ‘my friend’.
The importance of high frequency
One of the guiding principles of Real Fast Spanish is that you should learn high-frequency words ahead of low-frequency words. That’s not to say you should ignore low-frequency words altogether but what you should do is make a strategic effort to learn high-frequency words deliberately.
Moreover, this principle is used as a filter for decision making. It means that when you are first starting out there are hundreds of words you could learn but you can reduce the mental load and increase your ability to communicate more effectively by focusing on the most useful words first.
The reason that this idea is so important is that it speeds up the rate of reaching a conversational level of Spanish.
In this post, I’m going to continue with this guiding principle and provide the most frequently occurring verbs that behave like gustar.
How I determined the most common verbs like gustar
While researching this post I looked high and low to see if a ranking of ‘verbs like gustar’ had already been done somewhere on the internet.
I looked to the search engines, I looked to frequency studies I have used in the past, I looked in forums and I looked in a few books on the subject of Spanish word frequency.
In the end, I couldn’t find what I was looking for.
One of the biggest problems with frequency studies is that often they don’t take conjugation into consideration.
For example, in a typical frequency study, the words quiero and quieres count as two occurrences of the verb querer as opposed to one occurrence for two separate words. This approach makes it difficult to figure out the order of frequency for a specific verb structure such as the subject of this post.
So what I decided to do was go about finding the most common ‘verbs like gustar’ by reviewing the data with the help of a person who has dedicated a career to data analysis—mi esposa.
We used a set of data known as ‘n-grams’ for the Spanish language.
Put simply, an ‘n-gram’ is a sequence of ‘n’ words in any given language. For example, the phrase or sequence of words ‘I love you’ is a 3-gram in English. And this 3-gram ‘I love you’ occurs more often than the 3-gram ‘I love baskets’ or a more random 3-gram ‘red high curve’.
Said in another way, the study of ‘n-grams’ is the study of the occurrence of sequences of words as opposed to individual words on their own.
As a matter of interest, the highest occurring 3-gram in English is ‘I don’t’ or ‘I do not’. In the data, they still counted the contraction of ‘do’ and ‘not’ as two sequential words.
The next step in determining the frequency of ‘verbs like gustar’ was to look for 2-grams in Spanish with an indirect object pronoun (me, te, le, nos etc.) in secession with a verb in the present 3rd person singular or 3rd person plural conjugations.
We then had to remove 2-grams such as ‘me dice’ which means ‘he says to me’ because it doesn’t follow the structure we are looking for: ‘it ___ to me’. Once we removed these 2-grams, we were left with the set of verbs we were looking for.
We later reviewed the data for past imperfect and past simple conjugations to make sure the list doesn’t change drastically for different verb tenses.
The results: the most commonly occurring verbs like gustar
The results of the data analysis showed the most commonly occurring ‘verbs like gustar’ in Spanish in order are:
| Order | English | Español |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | To give | Dar |
| 2 | To like | Gustar |
| 3 | To make / do | Hacer |
| 4 | To seem | Parecer |
| 5 | To go | Ir |
| 6 | To permit / allow | Permitir |
| 7 | To interest | Interesar |
| 8 | To remain | Quedar |
| 9 | To pass | Pasar |
| 10 | To call | Llamar |
| 11 | To occur | Ocurrir |
| 12 | To be important | Importar |
| 13 | To leave | Dejar |
| 14 | To take | Llevar |
| 15 | To put | Poner |
| 16 | To lack | Faltar |
| 17 | To touch | Tocar |
| 18 | To cost / be difficult | Costar |
| 19 | To come | Venir |
| 20 | To delight / love | Encantar |
| 21 | To offer | Ofrecer |
| 22 | To serve | Servir |
| 23 | To arrive | Llegar |
| 24 | To result | Resultar |
| 25 | To worry | Preocupar |
A few notes on the results:
- Parecer is actually the most common ‘verb like gustar’ if you only use the data for the present tense.
- Dar is the most common when you include past conjugations.
So in the next section, I will give a few examples to reflect the occurrence of these tenses.
How to use these verbs in a Spanish sentence
This section is the most important part of this post because it’s where you put all of the above information into action.
Choose a number of these examples and work through them for yourself. Create your own sentences then try them out in your next Spanish conversation.
1. Dar – to give
You can learn about other uses of the Spanish verb dar here.
English: At that moment it gave him fear to ask for help.
Español: En ese momento le dio miedo pedir ayuda.
English: We didn’t use to care about politics, now we do.
Español: Nos daba igual la política, ahora sí.
2. Gustar – to like
English: Do you like to read?
Español: ¿Te gusta leer?
English: I didn’t use to like mushrooms.
Español: No me gustaban los champiñones.
3. Hacer – to do
Learn about other uses of the Spanish verb hacer here.
English: I need milk.
Español: Me hace falta leche.
English: What makes you laugh?
Español: ¿Qué te hace reir?
4. Parecer – to seem
English: It seems strange to me.
Español: Me parece extraño.
English: What do you think?
Español: ¿Qué te parece?
5. Ir – to go
English: Is it okay with you?
Español: ¿Te va bien?
English: This (medical) treatment is better for me.
Español: Este tratamiento me va mejor.
6. Permitir – to permit / allow
English: These glasses allow me to see better.
Español: Estas gafas me permiten ver mejor.
English: My job doesn’t allow me to relax.
Español: Mi trabajo no me permite relajarme.
7. Interesar – to interest
English: It doesn’t interest me to go to the beach today.
Español: No me interesa ir a la playa hoy.
English: This trip interests us a lot.
Español: Este viaje nos interesa mucho.
8. Quedar – to remain
Learn about other uses of the Spanish verb quedar here.
English: You aren’t left with any other option.
Español: No te queda otra opción.
English: I don’t have any flour left.
Español: No me queda harina.
9. Pasar – to pass
Learn about other uses of the Spanish verb pasar here.
English: What happened to you?
Español: ¿Qué te pasó?
English: The same thing happens to me often.
Español: Me pasa lo mismo a menudo.
10. Llamar – to call
English: What catches your attention in this book?
Español: ¿Qué te llama la atención de este libro?
English: That song caught my attention.
Español: Esa canción me llamó la atención.
11. Ocurrir – to occur
Ocurrir and pasar are almost completely interchangeable when they are used in this structure. The only difference is that ocurrir is slightly more formal.
English: What is happening to you?
Español: ¿Qué te ocurre?
English: These things never happen to me.
Español: Estas cosas nunca me ocurren.
12. Importar – to be important
English: I don’t mind (It’s not important to me).
Español: No me importa.
English: The exam results aren’t important to her.
Español: Los resultados de los exámenes a ella no le importan.
13. Dejar – to leave
English: This story leaves me with some questions.
Español: Esta historia me deja con algunas preguntas.
English: This diet does not leave me satisfied.
Español: Esta dieta no me deja satisfecho.
14. Llevar – to take
Learn about other uses of the Spanish verb llevar here.
English: It took me a long time to understand it.
Español: Me llevó mucho tiempo entenderlo.
English: This leads us to think that it’s possible.
Español: Esto nos lleva a pensar que es posible.
15. Poner – to put
Learn about other uses of the Spanish verb poner here.
English: It puts me in a good mood to see my friends.
Español: Me pone de buen humor ver a mis amigos.
English: The problems here make me very sad.
Español: Los problemas aquí me ponen muy triste.
16. Faltar – to be missing
English: What are you missing in order to reach your goals?
Español: ¿Que te falta para alcanzar tus metas?
English: My son is lacking motivation.
Español: A mi hijo le falta motivación.
17. Tocar – to touch
English: Your story is touching.
Español: Tu historia me toca.
English: It’s up to me to find a way to improve.
Español: A mi me toca encontrar una manera de mejorar.
18. Costar – to cost
English: Spanish verb conjugations are difficult for me.
Español: Las conjugaciones verbales españolas me cuestan.
English: What costs you the most to learn Spanish?.
Español: ¿Qué es lo que te cuesta más aprender del español?
19. Venir – to come
English: Is it okay with you to meet up with me this afternoon.
Español: ¿Te viene bien quedar conmigo esta tarde?
English: Nothing comes to (my) mind.
Español: Nada me viene a la mente.
20. Encantar – to love
When you love something or someone in a non-romantic way use this verb.
English: I love it!
Español: ¡Me encanta!
English: I love this type of food.
Español: Me encanta este tipo de comida.
21. Ofrecer – to offer
English: What does the new job offer you. (what advantages does the new job offer?)
Español: ¿Qué te ofrece el trabajo nuevo?.
English: This weekend offers me an opportunity to relax.
Español: Este fin de semana me ofrece la oportunidad de relajarme.
22. Servir – to serve
English: This attitude doesn’t serve me.
Español: Esta actitud no me sirve.
English: What good does it serve you to argue?
Español: ¿De qué te sirve discutir?
23. Llegar – to arrive
English: I came to like that place a lot.
Español: Me llegó a gustar mucho ese lugar.
English: If a difficult time comes, remember your dream.
Español: Si te llega un momento difícil, recuerda tu sueño.
24. Resultar – to result
English: I’m sorry, I can not possibly help you today.
Español: Lo siento, me resulta imposible ayudarte hoy.
English: I still find it difficult to believe his story.
Español: Todavía me resulta difícil creer su historia.
25. Preocupar – to worry
English: Nothing worries me.
Español: Nada me preocupa.
English: I worry a lot about the future.
Español: Me preocupa mucho el futuro.
Summary
‘Verbs like gustar’ is a great topic to focus your Spanish studies on. And with this post, you now have a list of verbs that are essential to know, practice and use.
The best thing about this verb structure is you only have to know the conjugations for the 3rd person singular and the 3rd person plural.
My challenge to you is:
- Choose five verbs from the list that you haven’t used or seen yet.
- Learn the present, past imperfect and past simple conjugations in the 3rd person for these verbs.
- Use them as often as you can for the next two weeks.
Once you have these verbs covered, come back and choose another five and go again. ¡Te viene bien saber estos verbos muy bien!
What sentences can you create using ‘verbs like gustar‘?
Thanks for the article, I’ll take up the challenge. There’s some on the list that I’m not very familiar with that I’d like to practice.
I’ve seen the terms defective verbs and impersonal verbs used to describe them.
Nice AJ! And thanks for the comment. I didn’t realise that you could use the term “impersonal” to describe these verbs, I’m used to using “impersonal” for verbs like llueve ‘it rains’ or ¿Cómo se dice? ‘how is it said?’ when there is not obvious subject. Also I hadn’t heard of “defective” verbs before.
It looks like these terms “impersonal” and “defective” have been used to describe ‘verbs like gustar’ as well as other verbs that don’t follow the standard subject-verb-object structure so thanks for your insight!
Interesting article. Found it while discussing why gustar is the “headliner” of this bunch with some of my students. These are actually typically called verbs de afección o verbos afectivos.
Question for you… why did your search only include the 3rd person forms? I assume it was just scale of search and how much would have to be excluded with verbs like dar/hacer that have functions outside of this structure. I ask because “Me hace falta estudiar…” and “Tú me haces falta” both play this game. As do “El me gusta…” and “Me gustas tú”. Just curious. Thanks for a great article! The uses of DAR and HACER are a great jumping off point for some more work with my advanced students.
Thanks Danny for your comment. You are absolutely right! I had to figure out a way to narrow down the search to avoid normal verbs with combinations of direct and indirect objects (te veo, me ves, te digo, me dices etc.).
Me fascina este articulo.
Me interesa el porque no se ensena ese en la mayoridad de clases.
Eres lo mejor.
Muchisimas gracias.
Gracias Catie 🙂
¡Me encanta este artículo, Andrew! You have great information and explanations. ¡Gracias!
¡Gracias a ti Jorge! Thanks for your support and for sharing the article.
Hey Andrew, I remember being in a café in Madrid and hearing for the first time the phrase “me parece” over and over. It sounded like one word and I had no idea what it meant.
An English speaking local explained its meaning and now, in my Language Exchange conversations, I use it over and over too!
Thanks for the great article.
Hola Tony, me parece muy útil para poder usarlo. ¡Genial!
Another very popular one, at least in Mexico and Guatemala, is valer. E.g. Me vale tu comentario, vos Mike. Your comment is worthless to me, Michael. / I don’t give a damn for your comment
Thanks for sharing Mike! I definitely do value your comment 🙂
“me vale tu comentario” should mean “I value your comment”, or am I missing something? Maybe ‘worthless’ could be “me no vale…”
Hi there! I’m browsing sites that could help my students explore these verbs on their own if they need more help… I think your list of Indirect Object Pronouns has an error… Isn’t Vosotros “os” – ¿A vosotros os gusta esquiar?
Hi Karen, yes, you’re right, excellent pick up!
Nice explanations… I’m just curious about your example under dar “Español: Nos daba igual la política, ahora sí.” What is the direct translation? Because it does not seem like a negative statement but apparently it is. I’ve never seen or heard the phrase before.
Also a common one in Venezuela is that people say “te pega” when something is hard for you like “¿te pega estar lejos de tus padres?”
Hola Kristin, to answer your question about “dar igual”, if someone asked “you would you prefer to eat seafood or meat tonight?” and you said “me da igual”, then literally you are saying “it gives me equal” (or both options are equal to me), the more natural translation in English is “I don’t care” or “I don’t mind”. So “nos daba igual” in English is “we didn’t used to care about it”, and then you can add any noun you want here, I choose “la política” for politics in this example. Thanks for sharing your experience with “te pega”.
I have heard the phrase, ‘me da bien….’ (I’m good at ….) and that each word can be modified to create lots of variations. (eg. Me da bien cocinar o no te da bien correr, etc. Am I getting this right? Did this come up high in the frequencies? Thanks!
Hola Robin, it’s my understanding that we need the reflexive form here “Se me da bien…” (I’m good at…). It’s possible that some Spanish natives might say this without the “se”, but I would guess that this would be regional.
Thanks! I’m sure I was mis-remembering. Now, with this reminder, I won’t forget. 🙂 From your experience, is it a common expression?
Yes, it is common, definitely worth trying out in your next Spanish conversation!
As usual, the article is both informative and fun to read. Thanks!
One question: How is frequency determined? Frequency in written Spanish? Frequency in conversation? On the street? The reason I ask is that is seems to me that, in some Hispanic cultures, “ir” is easily the most common verb like gustar. In Mexico, for example, almost every conversation ends with “Que (te/le/les) vaya bien.”
Hola Rob, the n-gram data that we used for the article was put together using a number of different sources including conversation dialogues, radio interviews, TV, movies, and books. The data is also taken from different locations throughout the Spanish-speaking world.
Our Spanish (Mexico City) Teacher insists that gustar can also/is used in an active form eg tu me gustas or me gustas tu?; ella te gusta etc Have you ever heard of this?
Hola John, Yes, of course, “gustar” can definitely be used in different ways. But “me gustas” isn’t anywhere near as common as “me gusta”. In my 12 years of speaking Spanish, I’ve never heard “me gustas” used in a conversation. I know it’s possible but there are alternatives that are far more common. At Real Fast Spanish, we always prioritize what is most important and common first, and if you have mastered “me gusta”, “te gusta”, “les gustan”, “nos gustó”, “le gustaba”, e.g. the most common form of gustar refering to all different persons in the past and present. Then you are in a really good place with this verb.
Verbs like “gustar” are known as “Dative-subject verbs”. The Subject is what would be marked as being in the Dative case, in languages such as German, and in English is marked by the preposition “to”. In Earlier English, “like” was used in this way, as in “Me liketh…”. Ditto “Me seemeth” (as is clear from the verb form, the agreement is with a Subject in the 3rd person). Eventually enough children grew up thinking that the Subject should always be “I”, and changed this to “I like…”, as though the speaker was an active agent rather than the affected person. All language teachers would do well to look at German (or Turkish or Korean) which clearly mark Dative case and other cases, to get a better and wider perspective on the language they are teaching. This is doubly true for teachers of English as a second language, who urgently need to get outside the bubble of their own language.
Thanks for sharing Rudy 🙂
Where do I find a table of the conjugations (if that’s the right term) of these gustar-like verbs when they’re used with the indirect object pronouns? When I search for conjugation tables, and there are many, these conjugations are absent. Your samples help a great deal, but is there something more complete?
Nevermind. I think I got it. I think I finally wrapped my head around it. Finally.
Hola George, yes, verbs like gustar are a little different to normal verbs. In general it’s either going to be:
– Me gusta, te gusta, le gusta etc.
or
– Me gustan, te gustan, le gustan etc.
E.g. singular vs plural.
But it sounds like you’ve figured it out already. 🙂
I think all of the “like gustar” verbs are conjugated in the third person to match the indirect object. That’s what I’ve got so far but am struggling to come up with a thought process to use them all. “Gustar” having the mindset of “is pleasing to” is fairly straight forward but the concept of thinking a sentence backwards is a challenge.
Both “to seem” and “to occur” behave like ‘gustar’ in English. So we can also think of “it occurred to me” and “it seemed (strange/cool/normal etc.) to me” as a good way to get our minds around these verbs in Spanish.
Wow! What a subject and what a comprehensive article.
But is there a reason such a construction exists? Did it replace a simpler structure or was it a necessary construct at some point in history?
And as with “gustar” meaning “is pleasing to”, how does one interpret the other words such as “parecer” and “dar”? What is in the subconscious as phrases are constructed using each of the 25 most common backwards verbs?
Hola Garry, note my comment to your question above. We can think of “parecer” as “it seems to me” which works well in English.
Now, after thinking a lot about the article, it seems to me that gustar is the only verb that doesn’t have an “se” option. There’s parecer and parecerse dar and darse with different meanings. Why? So those other verbs are used backwards, “like” gustar but they’re really not as they have a non “se” form which can be used backwards to signify something else from the main form?
I often tell students that “why?” questions aren’t always helpful when learning a language. In English, we could say “I’m in the car” but “I’m on the bus”. We could then ask “why is it ‘IN the car’ but ‘ON the bus'”? The answer is “that’s just the way it is”. There isn’t always good logic to certain things in language learning. A better question is “how can I remember this?”, “how I can remember to say “in the car” and “on the bus” (and “in the taxi”, “on the train” and “on the bike”).
Concise and accurate. Thanks. But is gustar the only real “like gustar” verb? All of the others add “se” as an option to change the meaning. And like parecer with its memory-elper of “it seems to me” what is the thought process for many of the other “like gustar” verbs?
There are 3 types of verb structures in Spanish: normal, verbs like gustar, and pronominal (reflexive and reciprocal). Technically, any verb in the Spanish language can behave like any of these 3 options. But, usually, each verb has a preference for one of these types. It is possible to say “te gusto” – “I am pleasing to you” (or “me gustas”) and it’s possible to find a sentence with “gustarse” (e.g. “Cuanto más se gustan las cosas del cielo…”). As a teacher, I always prefer that students focus on the most common uses first and try to avoid too much time thinking about the less frequently occurring exceptions.
Hi! The reason I ended up here was because I was investigating le/lo/la, which I still find difficult… do you think all these verbs take le/les when referring to the 3rd person? And as a side note, why is it ‘le gusta’ and not ‘lo gusta’?
Thank you
Hola Bridget! Yes, we need “le” and “les” when using all of the verbs like gustar. We need to use “lo” in sentences like “I want it” or “I need it”. With “le gusta” this in English is “It is pleasing to him” and whenever we need to say “to him” or “to her” or “to them” we need “le” or “les”.
thanks for this , its a good start for me Sir Barr Im now taking Spanish Class in the Philippines . And I want to learn more , I hope I can get in with my work in bilingual BPO industry.. Muchicimas gracias a usted!
¡De nada! Thanks for the comment Jovelyn 🙂
The only thing I see missing from this excellent piece is an explanation of the full form of gustar-like verbs – including the prepositional phrase (a mí, a ti, a usted, etc.).
I’ve been looking for something to link to on the Duolingo forums to send people to. So far all the pages I’ve found discussing gustar-like verbs only show the object pronoun, not the prepositional phrase, which I think might confuse people.
Thanks Christopher for the kind words and the suggestion! I’ve added a section to the article with the prepositional phrases included. Please let me know if it’s clear or if you think it needs further explanation.
Thanks! That’s excellent.
Okay, great. Thanks again for the suggestion 🙂
Andrew,
Can I assume that you can always translate “I didn’t used to like them” as “No me gustaban ” and “I didn’t like them” as “No me gustaron”. Imperfect vs simple past?
Hola Terry, your translations are probably okay going from Spanish to English but not the other direction. “I didn’t like them” into Spanish could be either option, it depends on context. So, we have to be careful!
i am really confused with la and le
for example i call him- le llamo
and she calls him
ella lo llamo
please help me with le and lo uses
Hola Paras, please check out our article on direct and indirect object pronouns, it will help with your question.
I like calling this type of verbs “the dative verbs”, because they mostly use indirect object pronouns which in broad terms correspond to what dative usually does in other languages.
Thanks for sharing Iván! 🙂
Well done, Andrew! This post with all the links to other pages has been the most comprehensive, important, progressive and interesting of all (so far). I appreciate the time you spend preparing these lessons.
Thank you.
Thanks for the kind words Garry! 🙂
At last an article that deals comprehensively with this troublesome topic. Thank you.
Thanks Colin, I’m glad you found the article helpful!! 🙂
Another cracker of an article. Well done & thanks. You are very talented in explaining difficult concepts.
#Colin (May5, 2022) hits the nail on the head.
‘At last an article that deals comprehensively with this troublesome topic’.
Thanks for the kind words, Killter!
Excellent coverage and explanation of a confusing topic!
I feel comfortable being able to return to this article regularly, and practice speaking with these verb constructs in class.
Many thanks for your time and clarity of teaching!
Thanks for the feedback Joyce, I’m glad you found the article helpful! 🙂
This is very helpful to me. I’m studying Spanish because I want to work as a Spanish Bilingual Representative here in my country.
Thanks for the feedback Ace! 🙂
Instead of saying “Me hace falta leche,” wouldn’t you just say “Necesito leche?” The first construction seems weird to me and not what would immediately come to mind in the context of needing something concrete like milk.
Hola Ruth, there is a subtle difference between “me hace falta” and “necesito” and the best transition to English would be “I’m missing / lacking” and “I need”. We would never say in English or Spanish “I’m missing a ride to the the airport”, we would say “I need a ride to the airport”. And if we were making dinner, we could say “this dish is missing / lacking salt”, but we could also say “this dish needs salt”. So in some contexts they are interchangeable and others it’s best to go for one or the other.
Andrew
Great article but also great confusion.
3 of the top words Dar, Ir and hacer seem to be able to swing both ways as a gustar like verb and a regular verb e.g. me lo dio
Hola Julian, yes, that’s exactly right! Most verbs in the language aren’t strictly “normal”, “verbs like gustar” or “reflexive”. There are many verbs that can behave in all 3 ways including the verbs you mentioned. The key, as a Spanish student, is to know how they change meaning in each of the 3 forms.
Thanks Andrew! Very interesting and informative article! I was inspired by your challenge and made some flashcards to practice (check my website link).
Un saludo
¡Muy bien! Nice work Tomas! Thanks for sharing 🙂
Are all “verbs like gustar” pronominal verbs? What’s the difference between the two?
Hola Jessi, there are 3 types of verb structures in Spanish: normal, verbs like gustar, and pronominal (reflexive and reciprocal). So, pronominal and “verbs like gustar” are different sentence structures. You can think of verbs like gustar in English as “it pleases me”, “it occurred to me” etc. And you can think of pronominal verbs as “I wash myself”, “I dress myself” etc.
Interesting that “doler” is not on this list. I would think it’s a pretty common one.
Hola Maryam, yes, absolutely, it’s another common verb that behaves like gustar but just not as common as the other verbs on the list. 🙂