Ellos se encuentran: Why use a reflex?

Question

Ellos se encuentran con sus amigos en el parque.

I dont see the use of (se) en this sentence. I know the reflex as acts done upon ones self. Me levanto, Me lavo. So why use it here?

Answer 1

Encontrarse has slightly different implications than encontrar. It can either literally mean "to find oneself" or less literally "to meet each other." In this instance, the sentence "Ellos se encunetran con sus amigos en el parque" means "They find themselves (or they meet....depending on the context) with their friends in the park." If the sentence were "Ellos encuentran sus amigos en el parque," then it would imply that they had been searching for their friends, and happened to find them in the park, as opposed to perhaps having planned to meet them there.

Answer 2

I found a past Lazarus post-

Many Spanish verbs can go along with a pronoun that appears to be reflexive, but it is not reflexive, and it cannot be translated either. These verbs are called "pronominal", and as soon as you see this word, you should forget about using "myself / yourself /..." to translate it.

"Encontrarse", as they already have explained to you, it is a pronominal verb, unlike "encontrar", and this also suggests that its meaning is likely to be completely different from the "normal" one. "Encontrarse" can mean, depending on the sentence, "to meet", "to be", "to feel", and a few more things that you can't get without the pronoun "se". A comparison would be the phrasal verb "run into": if you run into someone, you are not literally running like an athlete, and getting inside a person's body. "Run into" is simply different from "run" in this context. The same with "encontrarse" and "encontrar".

Thanks:hithere3387 yours also cleared things up for me.

• excellente explanation! - Blanca_Gonza Jan 16, 2010

Answer 3

"Ellos se encuentran con sus amigos en el parque."

Would this not best translate to

"They are to be found with their friends in the park"

or have I got it wrong (again)??