Verbs like “gustar” in Spanish – Learn and Practice

Welcome 😊 to our grammar lesson on other Spanish verbs like “gustar”.

In our lesson about “gustar”, we explained how this verb produces a particular sentence structure. We invite you to read that lesson first to fully understand this topic.

In the present lesson, we are simply going to review other verbs that work just like “gustar”, producing the same structure.

You will also find a Quiz and an Exercise to practice.

Identifying verbs like “gustar”

First of all, we need to understand that “gustar” doesn’t actually mean “to like”, but rather “to be pleasing”:

A mí me gusta el zumo de naranja.
Orange juice is pleasing to me.

“gustar” expresses a certain effect that something has on someone (“it is pleasing”).

We can think of other verbs that express different effects things have on people. For example:

• Something worries me.
• Something scares me.
• Something bothers me.
• Something makes me happy.
• etc.

In Spanish, all those verbs produce the same sentence structure as “gustar”.

List of verbs like “gustar”

Here is a list of common verbs like “gustar”. Notice that they all express the effect something has on someone:

Example sentences

Let’s read some sentences with verbs from the list above:

fascinar (to fascinate):

A mí me fascina su personalidad.
His personality fascinates me.

As we explained in our lesson about “gustar”, we can remove “A mí” if we want to:

Me fascina su personalidad.

Or we can also change the word order:

Su personalidad me fascina.

preocupar (to worry):

A mí me preocupa esta situación.
This situation worries me.

interesar (to interest):

A mi padre le interesa la historia.
History interests my father.

dar miedo (to scare, to frighten):

A ella le dan miedo las arañas.
Spiders scare her.

aburrir (to bore):

A nosotros nos aburren estas películas.
These movies bore us.

Practice

Quiz

Take this short Quiz about verbs like “gustar”:

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Exercise

Fill the gaps with the 2 words that are missing in each sentence. You need to use the verbs in brackets. Click on the gray spaces to see the solutions:

1) A mí me encanta leer. (encantar)
Reading pleases me a lot.

2) ¿A ti te importa la política? (importar)
Does politics matter to you?

3) A Carmen le duelen las piernas. (doler)
Carmen’s legs hurt.

4) A nosotros nos ofenden tus insultos. (ofender)
Your insults offend us.

5) A vosotros os alegra ganar. (alegrar)
Winning makes you guys happy.

6) A mis amigos les entusiasma el fútbol. (entusiasmar)
Football/soccer is thrilling to my friends.

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