Spanish language Q&A Forum

Hi! Haven't been here in a while, now trying to improve my listening comprehension again. So I've been thinking:

Listening comprehension in Peninsular Spanish seems to be different from the Latin American variants, at least I, personally, struggle to understand some of them more than others. As I've seen that there's a whopping 770 items on the listening comprehension list, do you happen to have lessons that have some degree of specialization regarding the variant spoken in the lesson? If no, I think this would be an interesting feature. If yes, then being able to filter by that would be awesome. (And I understand that this would be a major task given the number of variants, but I thought I might still ask).

Hope you have a great weekend!

I think that the concept of "verbs like gustar" might become clearer by seeing a literal translation as well as the English interpretation/translation. 

Is this the correct sentence construction for "verbs like gustar"?

Indirect Object + verb like gustar + subject ?

Le entristece la mala noticia = The bad news saddens her.

Could the literal translation be: For her, the news is saddening OR should it be To her, the news saddens? Neither really make sense in English! “Her, the news saddens = The news saddens her” and makes the verb transitive, no? And “her” becomes the Direct Object “la” instead of the Indirect Object “le”. Can “entristecer” be used as a transitive verb AND as a “verb like gustar”?

But surely the more correct Spanish would be: 

Las malas noticias la entristecen OR la entristecen las malas noticias

Are both forms acceptable?

How then can I reconcile la in that last version with the le in the lesson version? "La" is a Direct Object while "le" is an Indirect Object, no?

So, again, can “entristecer” be both transitive and a “verb like gustar”? OR is either version incorrect?

 Phew! HELP?

Hoy invito yo, así que escoged ________ os guste.

This sentence has subjunctive so am i right to say it means = choose whatever you like?

if it means = whatever you like, then why is cual or cuales wrong for this sentence?

thanks