Explaining Me gusta

Me gusta is an interesting thing to learn in Spanish and quite difficult at first.  One of the frustrating things about Spanish is that the sentence structure is often the opposite direction than ours!

For Example: Me gusta café, means I like coffee.

However "me gusta" doesn’t mean “I like” in the way you think of it.  Literally it means “IT is pleasing to me!” 
SO…. Me Gusta Café.

REALLY MEANS... To me, it is pleasing, Coffee.

Strange, I know. However, a handful of verbs follow this pattern.  This can be confusing for the novice learning to conjugate a simple thing like “I like”… instead of the normal add an -o to make it for ME,  you have to think backwards.

Let’s try another! How about I don’t care! In Spanish you would say it’s not important to me. So, start with your TO ME=ME(pronounced MAY). Then add the verb, to be important=importar. Then conjugate it to: IT is important. =importa.

Then you should get: NO ME IMPORTA. = I don’t care, or it’s not important to me!

There are a handful of verbs that follow this pattern:
Importar=to be important, gustar=to be pleasing, molestar=to bother, and encantar=to be enchanted/to love something are the main verbs used this way .
I promise this backwards thinking will get easier, but learning the way the language works is the part that does make it easier!  So keep trying and keep moving forward! With time, like anything, it becomes natural. ¡Que tengan un buen día!