Piacere — the Verb That Works “Backwards”

If you’re learning Italian, sooner or later you’ll try to say “I like pizza” and your instinct will be to translate word for word: “Io piaccio la pizza.” That’s wrong — and a little funny too, because what you’d actually be saying is “I am pleasing to the pizza”, kind of.

The verb piacere is one of those cases where Italian simply doesn’t work like English, and understanding why will save you from one of the most common beginner mistakes.

How It Actually Works

In English, the subject is the person doing the liking: “I like pizza.” In Italian, the grammatical subject is the thing being liked, and the person becomes an indirect object instead.

So the correct structure is:

Mi piace la pizza. (literally: “the pizza is pleasing to me”)

Mi piacciono gli spaghetti. (here the verb is plural because the subject — gli spaghetti — is plural)

The Golden Rule: Singular or Plural?

The verb agrees with the thing being liked, not with the person:

• Mi piace il caffè. (singular)
• Mi piacciono i film italiani. (plural)
• Mi piace viaggiare. (with an infinitive, it’s always singular)

The Indirect Pronouns You Need

• Mi piace — I like it
• Ti piace — you like it
• Gli piace — he likes it
• Le piace — she likes it
• Ci piace — we like it
• Vi piace — you (plural) like it
• Gli piace — they like it (in spoken Italian, gli often replaces a loro)

Want to Be More Specific?

You can reinforce the sentence with a + a name or a stressed pronoun:

A Marco piace il calcio. (Marco likes soccer.)

A me piace molto la cucina toscana. (I really like Tuscan cuisine.)

This structure is especially useful when you want to contrast or clarify — for example: “I like tea, but he likes coffee.”

Other Verbs That Behave Like Piacere

Once you understand how piacere works, you’ll start recognizing the same pattern in other very common verbs:

• Mi serve un consiglio. (I need some advice.)
• Mi manca la mia famiglia. (I miss my family.)
• Mi interessa la storia dell’arte. (I’m interested in art history.)
• Mi dispiace per il ritardo. (I’m sorry about the delay.)

All of these verbs put the thing or person “acting” on the emotional subject at the center — not the other way around, just like piacere.

A Practical Tip

Whenever you need to say you “like” something, try mentally flipping the sentence: instead of “I like X,” think “X is pleasing to me.” With a bit of practice, this mental shortcut will become automatic, and you’ll use piacere — and its cousins above — without even having to think about it.

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Credits:

Image by Gemini