Pronouns examples

Question

Can someone help me understand them??? I understand they are sometimes used to be reflexive such as "Él se lava". Most verbs can be changed to add se on the end to make them reflexive (Quedarse, lavarse, sentarse,..etc). I get confused when I read articles and there are two pronouns Example: Todavía se me escapa... No idea what that means. How can you tell when se is reflexive and when it is not?

Welcome to the forum . - Yeser007, Dec 30, 2011

Thanks! - stillerboy, Jan 3, 2012

Answer 1

Hi Stillerboy, and welcome to the forum!

I get confused when I read articles and there are two pronouns

Example: Todavía se me escapa...

No idea what that means

It still escapes me...

The use of "se" here places the person in the background so that he becomes a sort of incidental victim of the loss rather than an active participant in it. This might be a bit clearer with a couple of examples from our dictionary to provide a bit more context

se me escapó el tren ? I missed the train

More literally, the Spanish expression is telling us that, "The train got by me" or "The train escaped me," thus making "me" a victim of the event rather than an active participant. When we compare this with the translation offered by our dictionary "I (actively) missed the train, we see that this translation does not actually take into full consideration the Spanish viewpoint that results from the use of "se." In effect, the original Spanish sentence places less fault on the person and views it more as an accident of fate for the train to have been missed (i.e. blame it on the train/fate/etc).

se me escapó la ocasión ? the opportunity slipped by

This is a fairly decent translation of the original Spanish in terms of capturing the fatalistic nature of the original expression; although, personally, I probably would have translated it instead as "the opportunity slipped by me" or "the opportunity passed me by." In any case, we can see that the person is a passive victim of the opportunity's passing rather than an active participant as might be seen in an expression such as "I missed the opportunity."

Regarding this topic of reflexive pronouns, you might find the following threads informative:

?http://www.spanishdict.com/answers/183152/verbs-and-pronouns-transitive-reflexive-pronominal

?http://www.spanishdict.com/answers/100859/transitive-and-intransitive-constructions-use-of-se-by-lazarus

?http://www.spanishdict.com/answers/196714/sentence-of-the-day-using-se

?http://www.spanishdict.com/answers/106797/pronominal-verbsreflexive-pronouns

Really good answer! - MLucie, Dec 30, 2011

Whoa, now that's what I call a helpful answer! - katydew, Dec 31, 2011

That was really helpful! Thank you so much! - stillerboy, Jan 3, 2012

Answer 2

They are only reflexive if they are doing the action to themselves.

So...

Me ducho is I shower myself.

se ducha is he/she shower's himself.

If you see something like: Le ducho. That is I shower him/her and its not reflexive. So its just depends on the context.

Answer 3

You may be tripping on the confusion of having an indirect object pronoun "se" before the verb. It's even more confusing if there is a direct object pronoun right next to it in a sentence like "Se lo da."

Now if you're like me you've forgotten what direct and indirect pronouns are, and this requires a little bit of getting back to grade school grammar basics.

Here http://www.spanishdict.com/learn/show/20/1 is the lesson and it takes a while to absorb the rules. I had to watch it several times to really feel comfortable with it. I think it's one of the most important lessons though as using the various types of pronouns must be how native speakers speak.

Haha time to go back to Grade school! I don't remember a lot about pronouns. Its amazing how much we forget. Thanks for the help! - stillerboy, Jan 3, 2012

Answer 4

Stillerboy, this is an explanation from the reference section that might help. I know it gets confusing. There is a lesson on this later in the Learn Spanish videos so try to wait it out and soon it will seem easier.

link text

Ok thanks for advice. Can you help me with the example? I did not understand how she used two pronouns back to back. "Todavía se me escapa un “vos“ aunque con el tiempo he llegado a dominar un idioma híbrido entre ambas lenguas." - stillerboy, Dec 30, 2011

I didn't see this until this morning. It seems you got your answer. - katydew, Dec 31, 2011

Answer 5

Okay I have gotten myself confused again. IDO DO Verb. But if it is reflexive is it IDO REF Verb?

In the example: Todavía se me escapa.

Verb = escapa = he/she/it escapes DO/REF= me = cant be reflexive because the 1st person me does not match 3rd person he/she/it escapes, thus it is a DO? In which case the escape I am the object the verb is acting on. He/she/it escapes me. But I was taught that if you can put "to or from" in between then it is an IDO. He/she/it escapes to/from me. So the me could be a IDO.

And then there is "se". I can't do anything with it until I understand the "me".

But if it is REF IDO Verb. But even then the "se" cannot be reflexive as how can you escape yourself?

So is the "se" an impersonal "se" like in "se vende"?

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