"Europeans like to drink wine."
Translation:A los europeos les gusta beber vino.
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See these references . They will explain. https://personal.colby.edu/~bknelson/SLC/gustar2.html
This second reference is great.
The only way it makes sense is to realize that "gustar" does not actually mean "to like." It means "to be pleasing to". (Although duolingo won't let you translate it "correctly".) A literal translation of "A los europeos les gusta beber vino." is "Drinking wine is pleasing to the europeans." There is no way in spanish to write "the europeans like drinking wine" You must turn it around like this. Gusta is correct in this case because the subject "beber vino" - "to drink wine" is singular. You use gustan when the subject is plural. For example "Me gustan mis amigos." - "My friends are pleasing to me" or "I like my friends."
Four problems:
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You're missing "a" before "los europeos".
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You're missing "les" before the verb. In Spanish it's common to have an indirect object represented twice, with both the noun ("a los europeos") and the pronoun ("les").
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the action "beber vino" is singular, so the verb should be singular "gusta"
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there should be no "de" before "beber vino".
- "A los europeos les gusta comer las manzanas." Europeans like to eat apples. (Literally "eating apples pleases Europeans".)
As for verbs being used as nouns, yes they're treated as singular, as in English. I believe they're also treated as masculine.
- "Comer manzanas es divertido." Eating apples is fun.
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It is refering to the drinking of the wine. Therefor, the eating of the appleS also uses gusta, as someone mentioned earlier.
The literal translation of gustar is "to please." When we like something, it pleases us, and that is the way it is expressed in romance languages. A more literal translation would be "Drinking wine is pleasing to the Europeans." "Les" is the indirect object pronoun meaning "to them," "los Europeos" is "the Europeans," and "a" is necessary in Spanish for many interactions with people.
because verb gustar only has 2 forms - gusta and gustan. It doesn't rely on the subject of the sentence but rather the object. Gusta is used when the object of the sentence is in singular (like vino in this sentence) and gustan is used when the object is in plurar (example: A los europeos les gustan comer quesos.)