Spanish to Faroese: plural things you like do not require Spanish gustar agreement
The liked things control Spanish gusta and gustan
Spanish Me gusta el perro and Me gustan los perros differ in the number of dogs, not in the number of people experiencing the feeling. In the ordinary construction described by the RAE, the thing that causes pleasure is the grammatical subject, while me identifies the experiencer. The verb therefore changes when the singular dog becomes plural dogs.
Faroese can look deceptively similar because it also permits an experiencer expressed in the dative case. Daniel Galbraith’s linguistic presentation gives Mær dámar hundar, meaning I like dogs. Here hundar is plural, but dámar has third-person singular form. The analysis identifies the dogs as an accusative object rather than the agreeing subject found in the Spanish construction.
Do not repair an apparent mismatch by changing the meaning
For a Spanish speaker translating an answer about favourite animals, the singular-looking Faroese verb may seem inconsistent with los perros. In this attested construction it is not evidence that the translator reduced the answer to one dog. Changing the target noun to singular would remove the plural meaning merely to imitate Spanish agreement.
The opposite mistake is to treat the dative experiencer as sufficient evidence that all the remaining grammar must match Spanish gustar. Similar ways of expressing the person do not establish identical roles for the liked things. Spanish me and Faroese mær can point to the same speaker while the two clauses organize the animal phrase differently.
This also matters when a Spanish message changes speakers. Me gustan los perros and Nos gustan los perros have the same plural verb because the dogs remain plural. A translator must identify who holds the preference separately from the number of animals. Neither the first word nor the verb ending alone supplies both answers.
Faroese itself has more than one pattern
Jóhannes Gísli Jónsson’s research documents variation with dáma, including the nominative construction Eg dámi tað, I like that. It would consequently be misleading to label every Faroese preference sentence with a nominative experiencer as a translation error. The research also discusses variation with plural experiencers; the first-person dative example is not a universal agreement rule for every speaker and sentence.
Keep this distinction when adapting a Spanish questionnaire. An answer about liking several animals should remain plural in meaning, but its Faroese verb need not reproduce gustan. An answer by several respondents must still identify those respondents, even if a particular target construction does not advertise their number through the same agreement pattern as Spanish.
The practical comparison is therefore between complete preference statements. Who experiences the liking, what is liked, and which Faroese construction is actually being used? Those questions explain why a faithful translation can contain a singular verb beside a plural animal phrase, without requiring either an invented Faroese rule or an unnecessary change to the Spanish speaker’s preference.
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