Friday, July 9, 2010

Reflexive Verbs

Reflexive verbs are probably the first topic when an English speaker figures to him or herself that maybe Spanish was going to be a little harder than they thought.

There is a huge class of Spanish verbs called reflexive verbs, that simply don't have an equivalent in English. You could, however, make English verbs reflexive by adding words like myself, yourself, or himself. Likewise, English sentences like "She will be seated" or "Joanie gets dressed" also exhibit some form of reflexivity in that the action is directed, or reflected, back to the subject of the sentence via the addition of an adjective or past participle.

In the dictionary or vocabulary lists, reflexive verbs in their infinitive forms have an attached pronoun se. When conjugated the pronoun will precede the conjugated verb.

bañarse to take bath

me baño

te bañas

se baña

nos bañamos

os bañáis

se bañan




The following are some examples of sentences with reflexive verbs:

acostarse to go to bed

Me acuesto a las diez. I go to bed at 10.


vestirse to get dressed

¿Te vistes cuando sales en la noche? Do you get dressed when you go out at night?


lavarse to get washed up

Me lavo antes de cenar. I get washed up before dinner.


Now each of the above verbs used have a transitive mode, as well. Notice the following sentences, with NO reflexive pronouns:

Mamá acuesta a los niños a las diez. Mom puts the kids to bed at 10.

También, mamá viste a los niños en la mañana. Also, Mom dresses the kids in the morning.

Lavo el carro con un Sham-Wow. I wash the car with a Sham-Wow.


In these instances, the verb doesn't reflect back onto the subject, but rather addresses an object or other people.

There are SEVERAL reflexive verbs in Spanish that deal with actions that one does to his or her body, or daily hygienic activities. The literal translation of these verb phrases are practically illogical and odd, so it will do you no good to translate directly into English. Remember, avoid the translation trap. In these cases, the reflexive pronoun is an indirect object rather than a direct one. For example, the reflexive verb ponerse + article of clothing means literally "to put on to oneself the article of clothing". So,

Me pongo los zapatos. I put on the shoes.


And, using the reflexive verb limpiarse (to clean oneself) and adding a body part to that (los dientes, for example), we can say

Luis se limpia los dientes. Luis cleans his teeth.


Other commonly used reflexive verb phrases that might interest you are listed below.

amarrarse los cordones to tie one's shoelaces

cepillarse los dientes to brush one's teeth

cortarse el pelo to cut one's hair

maquillarse la cara to put makeup on

torcerse el tobillo to twist one's ankle



So, if this your opening venture into the world of reflexive verbs, let it not be your last, because I assure you, it won't!

Sigue estudiando,

Professor Joel

1 comment:

  1. It looks like the reflexive also implies ownership of the noun. There is no need to add my, his, their.

    ReplyDelete

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