Learn Hardcore Italian: Mi piace la compagnia.

It literally translates as Company pleases me. In natural English, we say I like company. The inversion occurs because Italian uses a different sentence structure with verbs like piacere.

Why is la compagnia treated as the subject in this sentence instead of mi?

In Italian, verbs such as piacere are constructed so that the thing being liked (here, la compagnia) is the subject—the entity that produces the pleasure. The pronoun mi indicates who experiences the pleasure, essentially meaning to me. This is the opposite of English, where the person doing the liking is the subject.

What role does the indirect object pronoun mi play in the sentence?

Mi is an indirect object pronoun that means to me. It marks the person who is affected by the action expressed by piacere. So even though our English translation is "I like company," in Italian the structure tells us that the company is pleasing to me.

How is the verb piacere conjugated here, and why does it appear as piace?