LingoDrop
Spanish · Pronunciation Guide
How do you pronounce "gustar" in Spanish?
goos-TAR, with a hard g, a pure "oo", and the beat on the second syllable.
Two syllables, gus-TAR, beat at the end because of the r. In practice you will almost never say the infinitive: the verb lives in its third-person forms, "gusta" and "gustan", both stressed on the first syllable, which is where the default rule puts it. Which one you use depends on the number of the thing being liked, not the person doing the liking.
Listen: gustar
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Sound it out
Hear it in a sentence
Nos gusta la comida mexicana.
We like Mexican food.
Listen: Nos gusta la comida mexicana.
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"Nos gusta la comida mexicana" is built backwards from English: the food is doing the pleasing, "nos" is receiving it, and that is why the verb is singular "gusta" even though we is plural. "Mexicana" has the x pronounced as the throaty j sound — meh-hee-KA-na — a historical spelling preserved in words connected to Mexico.
Where English speakers slip
The vowel in the first syllable gets read as the English "gust", a flat "uh" sound, when Spanish wants a rounded "oo". The grammar is the deeper trap and it never stops catching people: saying "yo gusto el café" means roughly I am pleasing to the coffee. The thing liked is the subject, so it is "me gusta el café", and the verb agrees with the coffee, not with you.