THE ITALIAN VERB “PIACERE”

The Italian verb “piacere” works a little differently than the English verb “to like,” and can be difficult for foreign learners to master. But don’t worry, we got your back!

Here’s our complete guide to using the verb “piacere”, with lots of real-life examples and helpful tables.

THE BASICS

Let’s start with the basic concept: the verb “piacere” does not correspond to the verb “to like,” but rather to “to be liked”.

Hence, it behaves differently than the verb “to like”. This means that the subject of the verb “piacere” is not the person liking something, like in English.

The subject of the verb “piacere”, in accordance to which the verb has to be conjugated, is the object of the appreciation, the liked thing.

Sounds complicated? Let’s look at an example sentence…How do you say “He likes her” in Italian?

The “liked object” (her), in Italian, becomes the subject of the sentence (lei), while the person who performs the action of “liking” something (he), becomes a so-called “complemento di termine,” and is introduced by the preposition “a“ (a lui).

EXAMPLES & STRUCTURES

Things may look difficult, but mastering this verb just takes some practice. Let’s look at some other examples (the subject is in italics):

The sentences above are suitable for understanding the mechanism of the verb “piacere”, but actually, in Italian, it is more common to form sentences in the following way:

The key thing to remember is that the verb “piacere” has to be conjugated in accordance with the subject, which is the LIKED THING and not the person who likes something.

It’s safe to say that the Italian verb “piacere” doesn’t actually mean “to like”, but rather “to please“, “to be liked by”.

Another important thing, that you may have noticed in the examples, is that the liked thing, if it’s a noun, is preceded by a definite article (i.e. “A me non piacciono gli spaghetti”). This doesn’t apply when the liked thing is a verb (i.e. “Mi piace nuotare”).

PIACERE & PRONOMINAL PARTICLES

And now to the last part of the explanation, which is the use of the verb together with pronominal particles (mi,ti,ci,gli,le,vi).

Although a sentence like “A me non piacciono gli spaghetti” is grammatically acceptable and frequent, there is another, even more frequent way of using “piacere”, which is by pairing it with pronominal particles.

If you have not already studied them, we can say that they are another way of saying “to me,” “to you,” etc. The table below can help you understand:

What about “they like pizza”? There is no pronoun particle meaning “to them”. You can say Play Gli piace la pizza or, to be more clear, just stick to Play A loro piace la pizza .

Using these particles with the verb “piacere” is quite simple, just place them immediately before the verb.

The subject (the liked thing) can also be placed before the verb.

Italian grammar says that if you use the pronominal particle, you must not use “a + person who likes something”, and vice versa, otherwise the sentence is redundant. It often happens, however, to hear “wrong” sentences such as “a me mi piace”, “a lui non gli piacciono” and so on.

CONJUGATION GUIDE

Of course, the verb like can be conjugated in different tenses:

Here’s the complete conjugation of “piacere”:

INDICATIVO

CONDIZIONALE

CONGIUNTIVO

IMPERATIVO

INFINITO

PARTICIPIO

GERUNDIO

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