Lesson 45: It interests / It seems / It Appears

IN this lesson we'll look at the way we say things like 'It interests me', 'It seems to me' and 'it appears to me' because although we have verbs like 'to appear' the way we speak is a little different

But before we get started lets refresh something:

Gustar recap

Spanish	English
Gusta	It pleases
Me gusta	It pleases me (I like it)
Me gusta mucho	It pleases me alot (I like it alot)
nos gusta	It pleases us (We like it)

As we said previously 'gustar' is better remembered as "to be pleasing" than "to like" in order to get the verb endings right. Fundamental to this is the idea that something is pleasing to someone.

If we think about it this way then we know that when things happen to to "he" or "she" the 'él' or 'ella' becomes 'le'.

Spanish	English
Le Gusta	It pleases her/him / (she/he likes it)
Les Gusta	It pleases them / (they like it)
Les Gustan	They please them / (they like them)
Le Gustan	They please him / (he likes them)

There are several more verbs that act this way in Spanish.

Interesar - to interest

This is not as strange as "to like" being flipped into "to be pleasing" because we follow the same Spanish pattern in English - "It interests me", not "I interest it" .. which makes no sense.

However one way to remember whether we are using 'le' or 'él / ella' and 'les' or 'ellos/ellas' is to thing of it as something being interesting to someone.

So it is just a case, as with 'Gustar' of remembering that we will be using the "I" and "They" form to get the verb form of "to interest".

Spanish	English
Me interesa	It interests me
¿Te interesa?	Does it interest you?
¿No te interesa?	Doesn't it interest you?
¿Por qué no te interesa?	Why doesn't it interest you?
Le interesa	It interests him
Les interesa	They are interested in it

Lets try that in a mega sentence: "Does it interest her to dance tonight?"

• "Does it interest her" - 'Le interesa'
• "to dance" - 'bailar'
• "tonight" - 'esta noche'

Spanish	English
¿Le interesa bailar esta noche?	Does it interest her to dance tonight?

Its all really by imagining yourself in Pride and Prejucdice where this is how people spoke om English. They didn't say "Would you like to dance?", they said "Would it interest you to dance?"

Spanish	English
¿Le interesa salir a bailar esta noche?	Does it interest her to go out to dance tonight?

Watch out again for that 'a' after 'salir' because 'salir' is a verb of motion.

Spanish	English
Me interesaría	It would interest me
Me interesaría verlo	It would interest me to see it
¿Te interesaría?	Would it interest you?
Te interesaría	It would interest you

Just a reminder there that phrases in Spanish are so often written the same and only the way they are pronounced defines if they are a statement of a questions.

Paracer - to seem

This one is a bit more obvious because in English we say "It seems to me" so its clear that we are using to.

I also find it helpful to remember 'parecer' by thinking of it as "It appears to me" rather than "It seems to me" - the words are closer in appearance.

Use this with caution though because there is a ver "to appear" - 'aparecer' so don't get them mixed up!

Spanish	English
Me parece	It seems to me (it appears to me)

What and that - 'Qué' and 'Que'

Let's just digress a moment to look at the very slight difference between 'Qué' ("what") and 'Que' ("that") - they look almost identical to each other except for the accent but in fact when we think about it the English written forms are very close to:

• "What" - replace the 'W' with a 'T' and we get "That"
• "Where" - replace the 'W' with a 'T' and we get "There"
• "When" - replace the 'W' with a 'T' and we get "Then"

Interesting pattern there that I had never noticed despite speaking the language for over 40 years!

So back to "seem" and a mega sentence - "It seems to me that he doesn't want to go out tonight"

• "It seems to me" - 'Me parece'
• "that" - 'que'
• "he doesn't want" - 'no quiere'
• "to go out" - 'salir'
• "tonight" - 'esta noche'

Spanish	English
Me parece que no quiere salir esta noche	It seems (appears) to me that he doesn't want to go out tonight

And let's grab some more very common phrases with 'parace'

Spanish	English
Me parece bien	It seems (appears) good to me
No me parece bien	It doesn't seem (appear) good to me
No le parece bien	It doesn't seem (appear) good to him/her
¿No le parece bien?	Doesn't it seem (appear) good to you (formal)?

Poner recap

We looked at 'poner' ("to put") earlier and one of the most fascinating aspects between English and Spanish - when you see a verb in English that ends "pose" you can replace this with "poner" to get the Spanish verb:

Spanish	English
Suponer	To suppose
Oponer	To oppose
Imponer	To impose
Componer	To compose

The "Com" in English comes from the 'con' in Spanish which means "with" so we actually have "with putting" if we split the word apart = putting something together ... composing.

But back to 'poner' itself.

Spanish	English
Quiero ponerlo aquí	I want to put it here
Me gustaría ponerlo aquí	I would like to put it here
Me gustaría ponerle sal	I would like to put salt on it
Me gustaría ponerle un poco más sal	I would like to put a little more salt on it
Me gustaría ponerles un poco más sal	I would like to put a little more salt on them

Note in these last four we're using 'le' again because when we say we want to put salt "on" something it is another way of saying we want to move salt to something.

Lesson 46: Past Tense: The Line in the Past