Re: Comer manzanas (was: Italian Particles)

Roger Mills <romilly@...> wrote:

>BTW with reference to Muke's "tu me gustas" etc.... granted I'm not current
>on all varieties of spoken Spanish, but I've never seen or heard gustar in
>any but 3rd person..... i.e. in the sense of liking a person:  ¿te gusta de
>mí?, me gusta de Pablo etc.
On the contrary,

    ¿Te gusto [yo]?
    ¿Le gustas [a él]?

and such are very common. That's why I don't agree with placing
them on the same category as Shakespearean impersonal verbs
like "methinks" or "meseems" -- now, _parecer_ does fit, since
constructions like _me parece que..._ 'it seems to me that...'
use the verb always in the 3rd person, and there is no proper
subject.

BTW, _gustar de_ is another (and more direct way) of expressing you
like a person (sexually). This usage is quite informal and usual for
teenagers and younger. It can also be used for other things, but
that usage is formal or pompous: "Gustaba de pasear" instead of
"Le gustaba pasear", for example. It has a certain connotation of
habitual or repetitive action, more or less like "would" in English
("He would walk in the park...").


--Pablo Flores
  http://www.geocities.com/pablo-david/index.html
  ... I cannot combine any characters that the divine Library
  has not foreseen, which in some of its secret tongues do not
  bear some terrible meaning. No-one can articulate a syllable
  not filled of caresses and fears; which is not, in some one
  of those languages, the powerful name of a god...
                   Jorge Luis Borges, _The Library of Babel_