How to use the Spanish verb Gustar

In Spanish, there is no literal equivalent to the English verb ‘to like’, in fact the nearest in both meaning and, more importantly, in the way that it is used, is the verb gustar, which literally translated means ‘to please’.

To emphasize this; if you were to say in English, ‘I like my coffee strong’, the Spanish equivalent when translated would be ‘Strong coffee pleases me’.
The use of the verb gustar is actually very simple compared to other Spanish verbs.
Gustar doesn’t follow any of the traditional Spanish verb patterns, be they regular or irregular and it only ever uses the third person forms, no matter what the tense.

The construction of a sentence using the verb gustar is the opposite as it is in English. I will explain in good old grammatical terms; the English subject becomes the indirect object and the English object becomes the subject.

Now to put that into English that everyone will understand.
If you look at the example ‘I like my coffee strong’, in this sentence ‘I’ is the subject and ‘coffee’ is the object, whereas – the sentence, ‘Strong coffee pleases me’, ‘coffee’ is the subject and ‘me’ is the indirect object.

As I have said, gustar is only used in the third person and this is because it relates to what is liked rather than whom or what likes it.
If what is liked is singular or if it is an action that is liked you would use gusta, and if what is liked is plural you would use gustan.
The present tense singular/plural looks like this:

Me gusta/gustan            I like...or, I like it
Te gusta/gustan            You like...or, you like it
Le gusta/gustan            He/She/You like...or, he/she/you like it
Nos gusta            We like...or, we like it
Os gusta/gustan            You like...or, you like it
Les gusta/gustan        They/you like...or, they/you like it.

Here are some examples:

Me gusta el deporte.         I like sport
Nos gusta España        We like Spain
A Juan le gusta cocinar.    Juan likes cooking.

And in the plural:

Me gustan los deportes        I like sports
Nos gustan las naranjas        We like oranges
Les gustan los perros        They like the dogs.
     
Gustar isn’t the only Spanish verb that is used in the this way, encantar ‘to enchant/love’, apetecer ‘to fancy/crave for’ quedar ‘to stay/remain’, faltar ‘to be missing’, parecer ‘to seem’, and doler ‘to hurt/ache/mourn’ are a few of the common verbs that are used in the same way.