"I like it" is one of the first sentences anybody wants to say in a new language, and in Greek it is built inside out. Μου αρέσει does not mean "I like"; it means "it pleases me". The thing you like is the subject of the sentence, the verb agrees with it, and you — the person doing the liking — are a genitive clitic parked in front. Get that backwards and you produce a sentence no Greek speaker can parse.
This is not a quirk of one verb. A whole family of Greek verbs about liking, missing, seeming, suiting, hurting and deserving is built the same way, and once the pattern clicks you get all of them at once. If you have studied Spanish you already know the shape from me gusta; if you have not, this page is one of the two or three genuine rewiring jobs in Greek grammar.
Who is the subject
| Subject | Verb | The person | |
|---|---|---|---|
| English | I | like | — (the thing is the object) |
| Greek | the thing | αρέσει | genitive clitic — μου |
Μου αρέσει η φωνή της is literally "to-me it-pleases the voice of-hers". The Greek subject is η φωνή, sitting in the nominative where any other subject would sit, and it is perfectly ordinary for it to come after the verb — that is standard Greek word order for a piece of new information.
Μου αρέσει η φωνή της, αλλά τα τραγούδια της όχι.
mu arési i foní tis, alá ta traghúdhia tis óchi
I like her voice, but not her songs.
Μου αρέσουν τα λουλούδια, αλλά όχι σε βάζο.
mu arésun ta lulúdhia, alá óchi se vázo
I like flowers, just not in a vase.
Compare those two carefully: αρέσει in the first, αρέσουν in the second, because η φωνή is singular and τα λουλούδια is plural. The verb never agrees with the person. Μου does not move the verb at all — it is not the subject, it is a clitic in the ordinary indirect-object slot described on indirect-object clitics.
| What is liked | Verb | Example |
|---|---|---|
| one thing | αρέσει | Μου αρέσει αυτό το τραγούδι. |
| several things | αρέσουν | Μου αρέσουν τα παλιά τραγούδια. |
| a whole action | αρέσει | Μου αρέσει να ξυπνάω νωρίς. |
| a person | that person's own ending | Μου αρέσεις. / Μου αρέσει ο Νίκος. |
The family
The same frame carries a large group of very high-frequency verbs. Learn the frame, not the verbs one at a time.
| Greek | Literally | English |
|---|---|---|
| μου αρέσει | it pleases me | I like it |
| μου λείπει | it is missing to me | I miss it |
| μου φαίνεται | it appears to me | it seems to me |
| μου πάει | it goes to me | it suits me |
| μου ταιριάζει | it matches me | it suits / fits me |
| μου αξίζει | it is worth to me | I deserve it |
| μου φτάνει | it reaches me | that's enough for me |
| μου χρειάζεται | it is needed to me | I need it |
| μου συμβαίνει | it happens to me | it happens to me |
| μου πονάει | it hurts to me | my … hurts |
| μου έρχεται να… | it comes to me to… | I feel like …ing |
Σου πάνε πολύ τα κοντά μαλλιά.
su páne polí ta kondá maliá
Short hair really suits you.
Μου φαίνεται ότι κάτι δεν πάει καλά μαζί του.
mu fénete óti káti dhen pái kalá mazí tu
I get the feeling something's wrong with him.
Μου αξίζει μια κανονική άδεια φέτος.
mu aksízi mia kanonikí ádhia fétos
I deserve a proper holiday this year.
Μου έρχεται να τα παρατήσω όλα και να φύγω.
mu érchete na ta paratíso óla ke na fígho
I feel like packing it all in and leaving.
Χρειάζομαι is worth stopping on, because it is the one member of the family that also has an ordinary, uninverted life. Χρειάζομαι βοήθεια puts me in the subject slot exactly as English does; δεν μου χρειάζεται inverts, and the thing becomes the subject. Same meaning, two grammars, both completely everyday — which is as clean a demonstration as you will get that the inversion is a fact about the construction, not about the meaning.
Κράτα το εσύ, δεν μου χρειάζεται πια.
kráta to esí, dhen mu chriázete pia
You keep it — I don't need it any more.
μου λείπεις: the inversion that catches everyone
Λείπω is where the pattern bites hardest, because both ends of the sentence are marked. "I miss you" is μου λείπεις — to-me you-are-missing. The person missed is the subject, so the verb carries their ending, while the person doing the missing is the clitic.
Μου λείπεις κάθε φορά που φεύγεις για ταξίδι.
mu lípis káthe forá pu févyis ya taksídhi
I miss you every time you go away.
Μου λείπουν οι φίλοι μου από το χωριό.
mu lípun i fíli mu apó to chorió
I miss my friends from the village.
Swap the two marks and you have swapped the people: σου λείπω is "you miss me". There is no word order you can rearrange to fix a mistake here — the endings and the clitic are the entire information.
Three ways to have a headache
Bodily sensation is where Greek gives you a genuine choice, and all three options are ordinary everyday speech.
Του πονάει το κεφάλι από το πρωί και δεν πήρε τίποτα.
tu ponái to kefáli apó to proí ke dhen píre típota
His head has been hurting since this morning and he hasn't taken anything.
Πονάει το κεφάλι μου, θα ξαπλώσω λίγο.
ponái to kefáli mu, tha ksaplóso lígho
My head hurts — I'm going to lie down for a bit.
Πονάω το στομάχι μου από χθες το βράδυ.
ponáo to stomáchi mu apó chthes to vrádhi
My stomach has been hurting since last night.
Three different grammars for one sensation. In the first, το κεφάλι is the subject and του is the experiencer clitic — the pure pattern of this page. In the second, the owner is marked as a plain possessive on the noun and there is no experiencer at all. In the third, πονάω is transitive (informal): the person is the subject and the body part is the object, which is a construction English simply does not have (I hurt my head means something else entirely). All three are correct; the first two are the ones you will meet in writing, and the third is thoroughly at home in speech.
Putting weight on the person
Clitics cannot be stressed, so if the point of your sentence is who likes something, you need a strong pronoun in front and you keep the clitic as well.
Εμένα μου αρέσει το κόκκινο, εσένα ποιο σου αρέσει;
eména mu arési to kókino, eséna pio su arési;
Me, I like the red one — which one do you like?
That doubling — strong pronoun plus clitic — is the standard way of framing a contrast in Greek and is covered on clitic doubling. The alternative is σε + strong pronoun (σ' εμένα αρέσει το κόκκινο), which puts the same weight on the person through a preposition instead; see pronouns after prepositions.
When a whole clause is the subject
The thing that pleases you does not have to be a noun. A να-clause ("to do something") or a που-clause ("that something is the case") slots into the subject position just as happily — and because a clause counts as one thing, the verb stays singular no matter how many plurals are inside it.
Μου αρέσει να ξυπνάω νωρίς τα Σαββατοκύριακα.
mu arési na ksipnáo norís ta Savatokíriaka
I like getting up early at weekends.
Μου αρέσει που ήρθες χωρίς να το πεις.
mu arési pu írthes chorís na to pis
I love that you turned up without telling anyone.
The sister family that takes the accusative
Here is the honest complication, and it is worth knowing before you over-generalise. Not every Greek verb of feeling puts the experiencer in the genitive. A second, equally common group puts the person in the accusative — and it is lexical, so you have to learn which group a verb belongs to.
| Genitive experiencer | Accusative experiencer |
|---|---|
| μου αρέσει — I like it | με ενδιαφέρει — it interests me |
| μου λείπει — I miss it | με νοιάζει — I care |
| μου φαίνεται — it seems to me | με πειράζει — it bothers me |
| μου ταιριάζει — it suits me | με ενοχλεί — it annoys me |
Δεν με νοιάζει που άργησε, με νοιάζει που δεν τηλεφώνησε.
dhen me niázi pu áryise, me niázi pu dhen tilefónise
I don't mind that he was late — what bothers me is that he didn't ring.
Σε πειράζει να ανοίξω λίγο το παράθυρο;
se pirázi na aníkso lígho to paráthiro;
Do you mind if I open the window a bit?
Notice that the inversion is identical in both columns — τι θα πουν οι άλλοι is still the subject of νοιάζει. Only the case of the clitic differs, and that is a fact about the individual verb, filed alongside the two verb lists on case forms of the weak pronouns.
Common Mistakes
1. Making yourself the subject. This is the flagship error and it produces something genuinely unparseable, because αρέσω has no accusative object to give the flowers.
❌ Αρέσω τα λουλούδια και τα φυτά.
Incorrect — the person is not the subject of αρέσω; the flowers do the pleasing: Μου αρέσουν τα λουλούδια.
✅ Μου αρέσουν τα λουλούδια και τα φυτά στο μπαλκόνι.
mu arésun ta lulúdhia ke ta fitá sto balkóni
I like the flowers and plants on the balcony.
2. Freezing the verb at αρέσει. The verb agrees with the thing liked, which means it goes plural when the thing does.
❌ Μου αρέσει τα παιδιά της αδερφής μου.
Incorrect — the subject is plural, so the verb must be: Μου αρέσουν τα παιδιά.
✅ Μου αρέσουν τα παιδιά της αδερφής μου, είναι πολύ ζωηρά.
mu arésun ta pedhiá tis adherfís mu, íne polí zoirá
I like my sister's kids — they're full of energy.
3. Putting the thing in the accusative. English "I like the coffee" makes the coffee feel like an object. In Greek it is the subject, so it takes the nominative article.
❌ Μου αρέσει τον καφέ χωρίς ζάχαρη.
Incorrect — the thing liked is the subject and goes in the nominative: Μου αρέσει ο καφές.
✅ Μου αρέσει ο καφές χωρίς ζάχαρη, με λίγο γάλα μόνο.
mu arési o kafés chorís záchari, me lígho ghála móno
I like coffee without sugar, just a drop of milk.
4. Reading μου λείπεις backwards. Both of these are correct, and they are opposite statements.
Μου λείπεις όταν φεύγεις για δουλειά.
mu lípis ótan févyis ya dhuliá
I miss you when you go off to work. (you are the subject — you are what is missing, to me)
Σου λείπω όταν φεύγω για δουλειά;
su lípo ótan févgho ya dhuliá;
Do you miss me when I go off to work? (I am the subject — I am what is missing, to you)
5. Confusing μου αρέσεις with σ' αγαπώ. The two verbs have different grammar and very different social weight, and the inversion is what marks the difference.
Μου αρέσεις πολύ, θέλεις να βγούμε;
mu arésis polí, thélis na vghúme;
I really like you — do you want to go out sometime? (αρέσω inverts: you are the subject. This is romantic interest, not friendship.)
Σ' αγαπώ και το ξέρεις πολύ καλά.
s' aghapó ke to kséris polí kalá
I love you and you know it perfectly well. (αγαπάω is an ordinary transitive verb — I am the subject, you are an accusative object, no inversion at all)
Key Takeaways
- In μου αρέσει, the thing liked is the subject and the person is a genitive clitic: Μου αρέσουν τα λουλούδια = "the flowers please me".
- The verb agrees with the thing, never with the person: αρέσει for one, αρέσουν for several, αρέσει again for a whole να- or που-clause.
- The thing takes the nominative, because it is the subject: Μου αρέσει ο καφές, never ×τον καφέ.
- Μου λείπεις marks both ends — you are the subject, I am the clitic — so σου λείπω is the opposite statement.
- The family is large and high-frequency: αρέσει, λείπει, φαίνεται, πάει, ταιριάζει, αξίζει, φτάνει, συμβαίνει, πονάει, έρχεται να.
- A second family inverts the same way but takes an accusative experiencer: με ενδιαφέρει, με νοιάζει, σε πειράζει, με ενοχλεί. The case is a fact about the verb.
- For emphasis, front a strong pronoun and keep the clitic: Εμένα μου αρέσει…, or use σ' εμένα.
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Start learning Greek →Related Topics
- Indirect-Object Clitics (Genitive)A2 — μου, σου, του, της, μας, σας, τους in front of the verb — the person something is given, said or sent to. Contrasts them with the accusative clitics on the same verbs, and covers the construction English has no name for: the genitive of the person an event simply happens to (Μου έφυγε το τρένο, Μου πάτησε το πόδι).