Purpose

By the end of this lesson, you will be able to correctly use “piacere” and similar verbs to express likes, dislikes, and interests.

Lesson Explanation

Piacere (to like) works exactly like Spanish’s gustar — genuinely one of the most confusing early structures for English speakers, since it does not literally mean “to like” but rather “to be pleasing to”:

Mi piace il libro. — I like the book. (literally "to-me is-pleasing the book")
Mi piacciono i libri. — I like the books. (plural subject → plural verb)

Piacere conjugates to agree with the THING liked, not the person liking it — appearing mainly in two forms: piace (singular thing) and piacciono (plural things). The “liker” uses indirect object pronouns from the previous lesson:

Mi piace — I like   Ti piace — You like
Gli piace — He likes   Le piace — She likes
Ci piace — We like   Vi piace — You all like

When the thing liked is an action rather than a noun, piacere is followed by an infinitive and stays singular: Mi piace ballare. (I like to dance.)

A genuinely important detail carrying over from Part 3, Lesson 3: piacere uses essere as its passato prossimo auxiliary, and its past participle agrees with the thing liked, not the person: Mi è piaciuto il libro. (I liked the book.) Mi sono piaciuti i libri. (I liked the books — plural agreement.)

Other verbs following this same backwards pattern: interessare (to interest), dispiacere (to be sorry/to mind), servire (to need, in the “to be needed by” sense).

Practice Questions