Gostar De: How to Say You Like Something in Portuguese

You already know the word. Then the sentence comes out as eu gosto café, and the Brazilian in front of you tilts their head for half a second. One syllable is missing, and it is the same syllable English speakers leave out every time. Gostar never touches the thing you like directly. De goes in between.

The rule: gostar carries de

Gostar is a regular -ar verb, so the endings are the ones you already drilled on falar and trabalhar. It is a relief after ser and estar, which break every pattern they touch. What makes gostar feel foreign is not the conjugation. It is the preposition welded to it.

A gente means “we” in everyday Brazilian speech and takes the same form as ele and ela, which is why it sits next to nós gostamos in that table. Our guide to a gente vs nós covers the swap in full.

If you are arriving from Spanish, one detail saves you a lot of rebuilding: the sentence works the way English does. The person who likes is the subject. Eu gosto is “I like,” not “it pleases me.”

What goes after de

The slot after de takes a noun or a verb. When it takes a verb, that verb stays in the infinitive, the dictionary form ending in -ar, -er or -ir.

Liking a person

People take the same de, and it almost always merges with the word after it. Brazilians put an article in front of a first name, so de + a Ana arrives as da Ana.

One warning worth carrying to Brazil: eu gosto de você, said to one person, lands as real affection, a step below eu te amo. With a new friend or a coworker, aim the sentence at what happened instead. Gostei muito de conversar com você says you enjoyed the conversation and nothing more.

When de meets the next word

De rarely stays on its own. It fuses with the article or the pronoun that follows, and the fused form is what you say and what you write.

The plurals follow the same logic: dos and das, as in eu gosto dos meus vizinhos and eu gosto das praias daqui. Between the last two rows, conversation runs on disso. Disto belongs mostly to writing, so if you learn one of the pair, learn disso.

Asking and answering

The question keeps de in the middle, exactly where the statement had it.

Now the answer, and this is where most learners over-build. Portuguese replies by echoing the verb, not by reaching for a word that means “yes.” Say Gosto. Add sim after it for warmth. Nothing follows the verb, so no de follows it either. Gosto de on its own is not a sentence.

Não gosto, gosto muito, adoro

The negative goes in front of the verb and leaves de untouched. In conversation Brazilians often close the sentence with a second não, which softens the line more than it negates it.

Going up the scale, one detail matters more than the vocabulary: the stronger verbs take the thing directly. Only gostar asks for de.

On register: gosto muito and adoro fit any room, from a barbecue to a first meeting with a client. Amo and curto belong to relaxed conversation, so keep them for people you already speak freely with.

Gostaria vs gosto

Two forms of the same verb, two different jobs. Gosto reports a taste you carry around. Gostaria places a polite request right now. Say the first one at the counter and the waiter will nod politely and wait for your order.

The de survives the change, which is the whole point of the pair our course material drills at the clinic counter: queria takes the thing directly, and gostaria needs de in front of it. Eu queria um remédio and eu gostaria de um remédio are the same request in two shapes. That softening move, a past-shaped verb doing present work, runs through the whole politeness system, and our guide to the two Brazilian past tenses shows where it comes from.

Gostei: the reaction verb

English reacts in the present. You taste the food and say “I like it.” Portuguese reacts in the past, because by the time you speak, the tasting already happened. The word Brazilians use is gostei, and on its own it is a complete sentence.

The rule holds in every tense. Name what you liked and de comes first, contracting as usual: gostei do restaurante, gostei da sua casa. Name nothing and the verb stands alone.

Common mistakes with gostar

Most of these are corrections our course material tells the teacher to expect, in the order learners run into them.

• Eu gosto café.

  Eu gosto de café.

  The one that gives everyone away. De is part of the verb, so it shows up every single time you name what you like.

• Eu gosto isso.

  Eu gosto disso.

  De and isso fuse into disso. This is the sentence English speakers reach for when they want 'I like it', and the fix is one word.

• Eu gosto muito ele.

  Eu gosto muito dele.

  People need de too, and de + ele = dele. The same goes for dela, do Pedro, da Ana.

• Eu gosto de estudo português.

  Eu gosto de estudar português.

  After de, a verb goes in the infinitive. Estudo is 'I study'; estudar is the form the sentence needs.

• Eles gosta de café.

  Eles gostam de café.

  Regular verb, regular ending. The eles form takes -am, the same way falam and moram do.

• Eu gostaria um café.

  Eu gostaria de um café.

  Gostaria comes from gostar, so it keeps the de. Its cousin queria is the one that takes the thing directly: eu queria um café.

Quick recap

Six lines to keep.