El dativo | Dative (2)

El dativo (2) || The dative (2)

A number of verbs besides gustar and encantar use the dative construction. These verbs include apasionar — “to be passionate about,” antojarse — “to feel like,” arrugar — “to be wrinkled,”quedar — “to suit, to fit, or to be left”, sobrar — “to be left,”caber — “to fit,” doler — “to be hurtful,” and faltar — “to be lacking.” As with gustar, the grammatical subject and object are the reverse of what you would expect:

• A él le apasiona la música clasica. “As for him, he’s passionate about classical music.” (apasionar)
• Se me antoja ir al cine “I feel like going to the movies.” (antojarse)
• Doctor, me duele la cabeza. “Doctor, I have a headache” (doler)
• A Juan se le arrugaron los pantelones “Juan’s trousers got wrinkled.” (arrugarse)
• Ese traje no me queda bien “That suit doesn’t fit me well (or “doesn’t look good on me”).” (quedar)
• Me sobra una cerveza en el frigorífico. “I have one beer left in the refrigerator.” (sobrar)
• Habríamos pasado las vacaciones en Brasil pero nos faltaba el dinero “We would have spent our vacation in Brazil but we lacked the money.” (faltar)

If you want to or need to use a full noun as an object or further specify or emphasize the pronoun object, you do so with a prepositional phrase beginning with a: A mí me gusta pizza pero a mi esposa le gusta spaghettis. “As for me, I like pizza but my wife likes spaghetti.”

These verbs give us additional ways to say what we like, what we want to do, and how we feel about things. Click to see our first post on the dative construction.