Il motivo e` nel fatto che /mancare/ e /to miss/ parlano della stessa situazione, ma sono verbi con costrutto completamente diverso; e` simile alla situazione con /piacere/ e /to like/ /I miss you/ : I : subject, the person that speaks about his feelings you : object: the person that is far away / Ti manco / == / io manco a te / io : the person that is far away /a te/ : specifies who is experiencing the feeling quindi: / I miss you / == tu mi manchi, (significato: tu manchi a me) Nota: in italiano alcuni verbi che descrivono emozioni, sentimenti, stati d'animo vogliono la persona che prova questi sentimenti al caso dativo, cioe` non come soggetto del verbo, ma come complemento di specificazione introdotto da /a/ : a me, a te, a lui, a lei, a noi, ad Anna, a Marco, ... In inglese lo stesso significato vuole la persona che prova (che ha) il sentimento come soggetto.

Giving you the right answer won't be enough. I want you to understand why "I miss you" is "mi manchi" and not "ti manco" and what the difference is between the two, so that you will never forget. In English the idiom is: someone (subject, who misses) misses somebody/something (object, what/who is missing or missed) "I miss you" follows this pattern exactly. But if we want to say the same thing in Italian, the pattern is: qualcuno/qualcosa (subject, what/who is missing or missed) manca a qualcuno (object, who misses) NB that subject and object are inverted here! We also add a preposition "a", meaning "to". So, following that pattern: I miss you becomes you miss to I you miss to me (you don't say "to I" in English, you say "to me") and translated into italian: tu manchi a me Now "tu", which is the subject of the sentence in Italian and the object in English, can be understood, as we usually do for the subject Italian and you get: (tu) manchi a me manchi a me Unlike English where "to me" remains "to me", "a me" usually is abbreviated into "mi" and shifted before the verb, but after the subject, and you get: (tu) mi manchi You can also add the subject back and say: tu mi manchi but we use "tu" rarely, only if we want to stress who the missing person is. On the contrary, if you want to say "You miss me": you miss me you miss I (me becomes I before the inversion) I miss to you (invert subject and object and add the to preposition) Io manco a te (translate) Io ti manco ("a te" becomes ti and shifts before the verb) ti manco (the subject is understood) Remember, ti means "to you", "a te". And if you want to say: He missed her? Same game! He misses her She misses to him lei manca a lui lei gli manca gli manca So, "he misses her" is "gli manca". Remember gli=to him. Now "she misses him": she misses him he misses to her lui manca a lei lui le manca (a lei -> le) le manca Remember, in "le manca", le=to her and the subject (lui) is understood. When there is ambiguity you may want to express the subject: lei le manca = She misses her lui le manca = She misses him Marco le manca = She misses Marco Anna gli manca = He misses Anna Btw, this is how I teach Italian to my students, by comparing its structure with English. If you want to take a lesson with me, you will learn Italian this way, effortlessly!