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Does 'encantar' have to be used in the third person?

By , About.com Guide

Question: Does 'encantar' have to be used in the third person?
Answer: I was told that encantar can be used in forms such as encantamos, etc. This startled me, as I thought it was only used in forms similar to gustar: encanta, encantan. Is it possible for encantar to be used in any form other than encanta or encantan? This would most certainly be a verb to include on your web pages. I have searched every resource available, online and hard copy, and nothing has been made clear to me on this matter. It has been quite frustrating.

It depends on how encantar is used.

It's true that encantar, when used as a translation of "to like very much" or something similar, is used in the same way as gustar. That is, the subject in the English sentence becomes the object in Spanish, and vice versa. Thus, "I like the house" in English becomes me gusta la casa in Spanish, and "I like the houses" becomes me gustan las casas. And if we wish to say "I like the house very much" or "I love the house" (obviously, "love" isn't being used in a romantic sense here), we could translate it as me encanta la casa. In the plural form, it would be me encantan las casas.

The pattern holds true for "we love the house" or "we love the houses": nos encanta la casa and nos encantan las casas. The concept of this usage is easier to understand if you remember that encantar might better be translated as "to delight" or "to charm," so a sentence such as nos encanta la casa could be translated literally as "the house delights us."

There are at least three ways where you could see encantamos or some other form of encantar in other than the third person:

  • It wouldn't violate any grammatical rules to use encantamos in a sentence such as te encantamos for "we delight you" or "you like us very much," but this usage appears to be extremely rare.
  • Encantar can mean "to cast a spell on." In the right context, te encantamos could mean "we're casting a spell on you."
  • Encantar can be used in the reflexive form, encantarse, to mean "to be delighted" or "to take delight," especially in somewhat flowery language. Here's an example from a travel brochure: Nos encantamos de poder darles la bienvenida en nuestra casa de vacaciones. "We are delighted in being able to welcome you to our vacation house."
Incidentally, gustar can be used in forms other than the third person too. You just don't hear it done very often.

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