Reflexive Verbs, Lecture notes of Spanish

Download Reflexive Verbs and more Lecture notes Spanish in PDF only on Docsity! Reflexive Verbs Learning to “know thyself” in Spanish Introduction One special aspect of many languages that come from Latin is a topic called reflexivity. Reflexive verbs are verbs that require the action to refer back to the person or thing doing the action. While this might seem pretty complicated, we can look to math to help us visualize “reflexivity” or “reflexive verbs”: In math, the “reflexive property” just means that any given number is equal to itself. In Spanish, something similar happens with reflexive verbs. Referring back to the subject Instead of “a = a”, Spanish has pairs of subject pronouns and object pronouns that refer to the same person or thing. Here is an example of one of those typical reflexive verbs with its two pronouns at the start: In English, this sentence transliterates to: I (to myself) brush the teeth. In Spanish, the “(to myself)” part is not optional with reflexive verbs. You must have it. But you may be wondering…. Which pronouns go together? Here is a list of all of the subject pronouns and which object pronouns they go with: Subject pronoun Object pronoun yo goes with me tú goes with te él goes with se ella goes with se ellos/ellas goes with se usted goes with se ustedes goes with se nosotros goes with nos Wait, how will I know which verb is reflexive and which isn’t? Normally, in your Spanish homework, you can notice that a verb is reflexive if it has the generic pronoun “se” at the end of it. Here’s a common example that you might see in your Spanish homework: El hombre _______ (cepillarse) los dientes. In a grammatical sense, though, you can get an intuition for which verbs are reflexive and which are not by asking yourself: Do I do this to myself? Let’s test this out with some examples in Spanish: Verb Do I do it to myself? Is it reflexive in Spanish? The verb in Spanish To wash your hands Yes Yes Lavarse las manos To wash your car No No Lavar el carro To brush your teeth Yes Yes Cepillarse los dientes To dress yourself Yes Yes Vestirse Take notice that all of the verbs in blue end in “se”. This means they are reflexive! The test works, and it works no matter who the subject is. Let’s say the subject is “Juan”, and the verb is “bathing yourself” or “taking a shower”. Is this something he does to himself? The answer is yes!