It’s Professor Dave, let’s conjugate piacere.
The verb piacere is extremely common, and it can potentially be very troublesome for
those learning Italian.
One big problem is that while piacere means to like, the construction of these two verbs
could not be more different.
In English, we can say: Carlo likes pizza, or we can say: Carlo likes mushrooms.
The structure of these two sentences is identical.
In each case, the subject is Carlo.
The action is “to like”, which is a transitive verb, and both pizza and mushrooms are direct
objects.
Pizza is singular and mushrooms is plural, and in English this won’t make any difference.
But in Italian this will be totally different.
The best way to make sense moving forward is to completely forget about the existence
of the English verb “to like”, and instead think of piacere as more closely meaning:
to be appealing, or to be pleasing.
Let’s write our sentences again this way, as it will make the Italian seem easier.
We can say: Pizza is appealing to Carlo, and mushrooms are appealing to Carlo.
This transformation is important to understand, as now pizza and mushrooms are the subjects
of the sentences instead of direct objects.
Also, it makes sense that the verb is in the singular for pizza and in the plural for mushrooms,
as it must agree with the subject in each sentence.
And lastly, Carlo is no longer the subject, he is now the indirect object.
In Italian, the indirect object will be expressed by the preposition “a” plus the article,
unless a pronoun or proper noun is there.
Finally, in Italian, the subject will often be placed at the end of the sentence for added
emphasis.
As we can see for the present tense, the fact that gelato is masculine and verdura is feminine
is irrelevant.
Piace doesn’t have gender, so it works for both.
But if we are looking at a plural noun, the person of the verb will need to be modified.
So that’s some background for the verb piacere.
Let’s go through all the forms now.
Of course, the third person singular and plural will be the most commonly used, because most
of our sentences will have a third person noun as the subject, but the verb does have
all six forms, so let’s go through all of them now, with examples.
As you can see, understanding how to use piacere is much easier if you think of it not as meaning
to like, but rather to be appealing.
Again, this can be confusing at first, but here are a few more examples that illustrate
this way of thinking.
This doesn’t mean: “Do I like you?”
It actually means “Do you like me?”
Remember, more literally, this means “Do I please you?” or, “Am I appealing to you?".
To respond, one could say: Sì, mi piaci molto!
This means yes, you are very appealing to me.
Or in English, more accurately, I like you a lot!
Now that this is settled, let’s quickly mention that piacere can be used in any tense
in the indicative or subjunctive.
In the case of passato prossimo, don’t forget the required agreement of participle, since
the verb piacere always takes the auxiliary “essere”.
Here are some examples.
One last thing.
Dispiacere, surprisingly, does not mean to dislike, but rather to be sorry.
And that’s all we need to know about piacere.
Let’s check comprehension.