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Have a look around the web to see what resources are out there for learning to use "gustar" and other similar Spanish verbs. Share your favorites here on this Padlet page. Tell us what you like about this particular resource and how it helps you learn to use gustar. The title of your post should be your name so we know who is posting.  (To add a post, double click anywhere on the screen)

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This page is informative and fun.

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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.

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.
English: I don't like cheese.
Literal translation: To me cheese is not pleasing.
Español: No me gusta el queso. Literal translation: The movie is pleasing to me (or more specifically 'to me the movie is pleasing').
Español: Me gusta la película.
If you want to apply these verbs to someone other than yourself, you need to use one of the following 'indirect object pronouns':

Here are a few examples with these indirect objects pronouns in action:

For more details on how to use this verb structure refer back to podcast episode #7 - '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 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 because 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 queries 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.
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.
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 novia.

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.

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 preterite 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:

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.

1. Dar - to give
So in the next section I will give a few examples to reflect the occurrence of these tenses.
2. Gustar - to like 3. Hacer - to do
How to use these verbs in a Spanish sentence
4. Parecer - to seem 5. Ir - to go 6. Permitir - to permit / allow 7. Interesar - to interest English: It doesn't interest me to go to the beach today.
8. Quedar - to remain Español: No me interesa ir a la playa hoy. 9. Pasar - to pass
This section is the most important part of this post because it's where you put all of the above information into action.
10. Llamar - to call English: What catches your attention in this book?
11. Ocurrir - to occur Español: ¿Qué te llama la atención de este libro? 12. Importar - to be important 13. Dejar - to leave English: This story leaves me with some questions.
14. Llevar - to take Español: Esta historia me deja con algunas preguntas. 15. Poner - to put
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.
16. Faltar - to be missing 17. Tocar - to touch 18. Costar - to cost English: What costs you the most to learn Spanish?.19. Venir - to come 20. Encantar - to love Español: ¿Qué es lo que te cuesta más aprender del español? 21. Ofrecer - to offer English: This weekend offers me an opportunity to relax. 22. Servir - to serve 23. Llegar - to arrive English: If a difficult time comes, remember your dream. 24. Resultar - to result English: I still find it difficult to believe his story. 25. Preocupar - to worry
Español: Todavía me resulta difícil creer su historia.
Español: Si te llega un momento difícil, recuerda tu sueño.
Español: E ste fin de semana me ofrece la oportunidad de relajarme.
You can learn about other uses of the Spanish verb dar here.

Learn about other uses of the Spanish verb hacer here.

Learn about other uses of the Spanish verb quedar here.

Learn about other uses of the Spanish verb pasar here.

Ocurrir and pasar are almost completely interchangeable when they are used in this structure. The only difference is that ocurrir is slightly more formal.

Learn about other uses of the Spanish verb llevar here.

Learn about other uses of the Spanish verb poner here.

When you love something or someone in a non-romantic way use this verb.

Verbs like gustar - Practice quiz

To test your knowledge of everything you have read above about verbs like gustar, I have written a practice quiz.

The quiz will help you practice constructions and conjugations with the verbs from the top 25 list.

You can access practice quiz by clicking on the image on the right, or this link:

Practice quiz: Click here to test your knowledge of 'Verbs Like Gustar'.

Summary

'Verbs like gustar' is a great topic to focus your Spanish studies on. And with this post, you now have 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:

1. Choose five verbs from the list that you haven't used or seen yet.

2. Learn the present, past imperfect and preterite conjugations in the 3rd person for these verbs.

3. 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 '?

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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 '.

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If you like wordy technical grammar-focused explanations, this page is great!

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Spanish sentences generally use the same order and sentence structure as English sentences. An example:

Here both sentences start with a subject, move on to a verb, and finish off with an object.
But this isn't always the case. Certain Spanish verbs basically work in reverse, which forces us to change the order of the sentence. Gustar is the most common of these verbs.

How to Use Gustar

How would you translate the following sentence?

If you look up "to like" in the dictionary, you'll probably be told to use gustar. This might prompt you to translate the sentence like this:

But that's not the correct translation even though gustar is the appropriate verb to use in this situation. While it's not wrong to say that gustar means "to like," it's not exactly true either. It's more accurate to say that gustar means "to be pleasing." Knowing that, you can see that you can't really translate "I like pizza" word for word. Instead you'll need to first change the sentence to something like this:

The meaning hasn't changed, but you're expressing it a different way. Notice that what used to be the object (pizza) is now the subject of the sentence, and what used to be the subject (I) is now an object (me).

Backward Verbs

So how do we translate "Pizza is pleasing to me"? Well, we still need to make another change before we can translate. Gustar is a member of a class of verbs sometimes called "backward verbs." Sentences that use these verbs have an abnormal sentence structure. Rather than appearing at the beginning of the sentence, the subject comes after the verb. Therefore the subject (the thing that is pleasing) comes at the end of the sentence, the form of gustar comes in front of that, and the sentence starts with an object pronoun (which refers to the person being pleased). So instead of "Pizza is pleasing to me" we should translate:

So how do we do that in Spanish? Follow this formula:

IOP (of person being pleased) + gustar + subject (thing that is pleasing)

What's an IOP? IOP stands for "indirect object pronoun." You'll learn more about IOPs later, but for right now refer to these charts:

Put it all together and here's what we get:

Here are some more examples:

Note: To say "I like it" simply omit the subject altogether: Me gusta.

Notice how the verb gusta doesn't change in any of the examples above. That's because the subject "pizza" doesn't change either.

What if you like more than one thing? Now we need to conjugate gustar differently. We need the plural form, gustan, since we now have a plural subject. Some examples:

Keep in mind that we're conjugating gustar to agree with the plural subjects at the end of the sentence ( tacos, galletas, huevos, and papas fritas). The objects ( me, te, nos, and les) don't affect our verb conjugation even though they're at the beginning of the sentence.

The vast majority of the time, you'll use either gusta (if one thing is liked) or gustan (for more than one thing). It's rare that you would need gustas or gustamos, and there are other, better ways of conveying that meaning. See Liking People below.

Note: Because they are not "countable" you should always use gusta with infinitives: Me gusta leer y escribir.

Using Gustar with More Than One Subject

Once you've learned about using plural subjects with gustar, you may encounter sentences that look like they contain a grammatical error, such as the following:

Me gusta el arte y la música.
I like art and music.

Art and music are two things, right? Shouldn't gusta (singular) really be gustan (plural)?

Not always. Things get a little messy when y is used in the subject. The official rule comes down to "countability." If your subjects are "countable" (tangible, concrete, specific), you should treat them as plural and use gustan:

Me gustan el vestido y la cartera.
I like the dress and the purse.

If your subjects are non-countable (abstract, indefinite), you should treat them as singular and use gusta:

Me gusta la tecnología y la moda.
I like technology and fashion.

Regardless of grammar, you're more likely to see and hear the singular gusta when the subject has an y in it, even if the subject is countable.

Ambiguity with Le and Les

If you use me, te, nos, or os as your indirect object pronoun, the meaning of the sentence should be clear. However, if you use le or les, it's not readily apparent whom you're talking about. For instance, how would you translate these sentences?

Le gustan los libros.
Le gustan las películas.
¿Les gustan las canciones?

The first sentence could be translated "He likes books," "She likes books," or even "You ( Ud.) like books." To clear up any confusion, Spanish speakers will often add some context to the sentence by adding a and a pronoun:

It may seem redundant to include both a él and le in the same sentence since they mean the same thing, but it happens regularly in Spanish. Even if we don't need to, we always use an indirect object pronoun with gustar.

In a similar way, if you need to include someone's name in the sentence, you'll start with a followed by their name, and you'll still use the indirect object pronoun:

Remember that the a is necessary because even though Elena, Marcos, Rodrigo and Felipe are at the beginning of the sentence, they're the objects of the sentence, not the subjects. We need to say "To Elena," "To Marcos," and "To Rodrigo and Felipe."

Added Emphasis

We can also use a and a prepositional pronoun where it would otherwise be unnecessary in order to emphasize whose opinion you're discussing:

Even though they are redundant, a ti is used together with te, and a mí is used with me, to put a stronger emphasis on the "you" and the "me."

Notes on Gustar

Gustar Questions

Normally to turn a sentence into a question we move the subject from the beginning of the sentence to the end. With gustar the subject is already at the end of the sentence, so all we need to do is add the question marks:

Gustar with Other Verbs

Simply pair gusta with an infinitive to say that you like doing something. No need to conjugate twice:

Gustar in Other Tenses

Gustar works the same way in other tenses (and moods):

Note: It's appropriate to say ¡Con mucho gusto! ("With much pleasure!") when meeting someone.

Liking People

Gustar is typically used to state that you like things, not that you like people. While it's not out of the question to say something like Me gustas tú ("You are pleasing to me") or Les gustamos ("We are pleasing to them"), those expressions can indicate physical attraction and should be used carefully. You're better off re-wording things or using the phrase caer bien:

Caer bien literally means "to fall well," but in this context would be more like "to leave a good impression." You can use caer mal to indicate dislike: Me cae mal Ronaldo.

Unless you're very narcissistic, you're going to want to avoid saying Me gusto.

Other Verbs Similar to Gustar

While we're on the subject of gustar, there are a number of other verbs which work similarly. The following verbs all take an indirect object pronoun and they usually come in front of the subject:

Some examples:

No me importan las razones.
I don't care about the reasons.
(The reasons aren't important to me.)

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Spanish sentences generally use the same order and sentence structure as English sentences. An example: Here both sentences start with a subject, move on to a verb, and finish off with an object. But this isn't always the case. Certain Spanish verbs basically work in reverse, which forces us to change the order of the sentence.

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This is a classic song by Manu Chau for learning to use "gustar" through example. This is not the official video but is handy since it has the lyrics. Manu Chau often mixes languages in his songs so you might notice a little French thrown in ("je ne sais pas"; "je ne sais plus").

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These video lessons are short and the instructor, Jordan, is articulate and includes a lot of examples:

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Learn Spanish - Talking about Likes/Dislikes (part 1)

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SUBSCRIBE for more Spanish videos: http://bit.ly/XGe7we Follow me on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/srjordanspanish Tweet me: https://twitter.com/senorjordan Check out my website: http://www.senorjordan.com ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ In this video, we'll be talking about the phrase 'Me gusta', which could be roughly translated as 'I like' and how to use it with verbs to tell what you like to do.

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Another lesson on Gustar from Jordan.

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This video lesson reviews and build on the previous 'gustar' videos. So you might check those out before watching this one if you haven't. What the heck, I'll throw in some fruits too. The names for the fruits might differ from country to country. These are more or less standard names.