The concept of ‘reflexive' verbs exists in the English language, altho' we don't think too much about it as we're speaking . . . we're more concerned with being understood by our listener/reader than we are with identifying the grammatical point we're using to communicate, right? In English, the ‘reflexifizing' of the verb action is done by including the words "myself, yourself, himself, herself, itself, ourselves, themselves." For example, take the sentence "He washed himself off after falling in the mudpuddle." or "We saw ourselves in the plate-glass windows as we walked around the mall." These ‘-self/-selves' words are called reflexive pronouns in the English language and when they hang around a verb they ‘reflexifize' it. We call these verb types reflexive because the verb action, in these cases the "washing" and "seeing" actions, are reflected back on the subject of the sentence . . . he washed himself . . . we saw ourselves. Remember that the verbs that get ‘reflexifized' are just regular ol' All-American verbs, used all the time without the reflexive pronoun. Look at our example sentences above to see what I'm talking about, i.e., the verbs ‘saw' and ‘washed' can be used without a ‘-self/-selves' word in the same sentence. We could say "He washed his truck off after taking it four-wheeling." or "We saw some really huge plate-glass windows as we walked around the mall." See the difference in the two sets of sentences? The first set use reflexive verbs, called such by virtue of the inclusion of a ‘-self/-selves' word next to the verb, and the second set do not, even tho' we're using exactly the same verbs.
The Spanish language does exactly the same thing with its reflexive verbs, that is they take a regular ol' Spanish verb and add a "reflexive pronoun marker" and, WHAM!, they have created a ‘reflexified' verb. Some examples would be: levantar and levantarse, the first infinitive verb meaning to raise (something or someone) or to lift (something or someone), and the second infinitive verb meaning to lift oneself or to raise oneself. And again: lavar and lavarse, the first infinitive verb meaning to wash (something or someone) and the second infinitive verb meaning to wash oneself. We could go on with more examples, but I think you get the picture, right? Just like reflexive verbs in English, these reflexive verbs tell us that the action of the verb is reflected back on subject of the sentence.
Let's look at the steps we must take to conjugate a reflexive verb in Spanish (fortunately they are not too difficult to MEMORIZE . . hint! hint!)
| As we work through these rules, we'll list the steps your mind must follow in order to correctly conjugate a reflexive verb on the left-hand side, and on the right-hand side we'll use the reflexive verb levantarse and the subject pronoun tú in our example below. We'll do this so we can see each step of the conjugation process. |
1. Find the infinitive (with se attached to the -ar, -er, -ir) llevantarse
2. Move the reflexive pronoun se out in front of the infinitive se levantar
3. Conjugate the infinitive according to the subject, in our case tú and the present tense of the verb se levantas
4. Change the reflexive pronoun se to agree with the subject te levantas
Here's your list of reflexive pronouns:
me nos te os se se Here's some reflexive verbs that you might use during the day:
| despertarse (ie) |
| levantarse de la cama . . . del sofá . . . del pupitre . . . de la mesa |
| mirarse en el espejo |
| cepillarse los dientes |
| afeitarse la cara or afeitarse las piernas |
| bañarse or ducharse |
| secarse con toalla |
| peinarse el pelo or cepillarse el pelo |
| maquillarse la cara con polvo . . . crema . . . mascara |
| ponerse pefume or ponerse coloñia |
| ponerse la ropa or vestirse (i, e) . . . la chaqueta . . . el sombrero . . . la bufanda |
| sentarse (ie) en el pupitre . . . en el asiento . . . en la silla . . . en la mesa |
| preocuparse por la nota . . . la salud . . . la familia . . el coche |
| quejarse de la cantidad de tarea . . . de la situación económica |
| enojarse con el profesor . . . con los padres . . . con el novio/la novia |
| despedirse(i, i) de los amigos . . . de los padres . . . del hermanito |
| encontrarse con los amigos en el bar . . . en el parque . . . en la calle . . . en la iglesia |
| dirvertirse (ie, i) en el bar . . . en la fiesta . . . en la clase . . . en la cena familiar |
| reírse (i, i) de los chistes |
| volverse (ue) a la casa . . . a la cama . . . al gimnasio |
| lavarse las manos or lavarse la cara |
| secarse las manos |
| quitarse la ropa . . . el abrigo . . . los zapatos . . . la gorra . . . los anteojos/las gafas |
| acostarse (ue) en la cama . . . en la hamaca . . . en el sofá . . . en el banco |
| dormirse (ue,u) |
| soñarse con él/ella |
| enamorarse de una chica/un chico |
| comprometerse con él/ella |
| casarse con la chica /el chico |
| divorciarse de ella/él |
| graduarse de la universidad |