Learn Italian: Mi è piaciuto molto questo festival speciale.

In Italian, the verb piacere works backwards compared to English. Instead of saying 'I liked the festival', you literally say 'The festival was pleasing to me' (mi). Because the festival is the grammatical subject doing the action, we use the 'it' form of the verb. In the past tense, piacere always uses essere (to be) as its helper verb, giving us è piaciuto.

Why does piaciuto end in an 'o'?

Because piacere uses essere in the past tense, the ending of the past participle (piaciuto) has to match the subject. The subject here is questo festival. Since festival is a singular masculine word, we use piaciuto. If you liked a feminine noun, it would be mi è piaciuta, and if you liked multiple festivals, it would be mi sono piaciuti.

How do we know festival is masculine if it ends in a consonant?

Foreign loanwords that end in a consonant, like festival, computer, or bar, are generally treated as masculine in Italian. That is why we use the masculine word for 'this' (questo) and why the verb ending is masculine.

Why does speciale end in an 'e' if festival is masculine? Shouldn't it be 'specialo'?