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Me gusta el chocolate, pero no me gustan los dulces.

Me gusta el chocolate, pero no me gustan los dulces.
I like chocolate, but I don't like sweets.
From Lesson 48:Plural likes (me gustan)·Spanish (Latin America)

Questions & Answers about Me gusta el chocolate, pero no me gustan los dulces.

Why does the sentence use both gusta and gustan?
The verb gustar works differently than "to like" in English; it literally means "to be pleasing to." Because el chocolate is a single thing, we use the singular verb gusta (chocolate is pleasing to me). Because los dulces is multiple things, we must use the plural verb gustan (sweets are pleasing to me).
Why are the words el and los included? English just says "I like chocolate, but I don't like sweets."
In Spanish, when you talk about your likes and dislikes in a general sense, you always need to include the definite article (el, la, los, or las) before the noun. You cannot skip it like we do in English.
Why is the word no placed before me in the second half?
When making a sentence negative with verbs like gustar, the negative word no must always go before the pronoun (me). You cannot put it between the pronoun and the verb.
The word for a single sweet is dulce. Why does it just take an -s instead of -es to become plural?
In Spanish, if a word ends in a vowel (like the e in dulce), you simply add an -s to make it plural. You only add -es if the word ends in a consonant.

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