Using olvidarse correctly

Question

I sometimes see things like

me olvidé, (I forgot)

sometimes eg

Se me había olvidado (I had forgotten)

Where it seems that in the first case, the reflexive pronoun is me, and the second case, me is an indirect object pronoun and the third person is used ("It had forgotten me"?)

So I'm not sure how to use it correctly. Any tips?

I think you may find this useful as well: http://www.spanishdict.com/answers/8537/olvidarse - Goldie_Miel, Feb 18, 2012

thanks for the link - tomsky, Feb 18, 2012

Answer 1

To say "I forgot the keys", it would be:

Me olvidé de las llaves. "Me" is the reflexive pronoun from olvidarse. "De" is used after olvidarse when talking about forgetting something.

You could also use this structure:

Se me olvidó las llaves. "Se" is the reflexive pronoun, "me" is the indirect object in this case. I don't think "de" is used here.

Or in other words: The keys were forgotten by me.

Yeah, Tosh is right about the two different structures. With that last one you have to conjugate olvidar to the thing being forgotten. ''Se me olvidaron las llaves-- The keys were forgotten by me.'' - michellech, Feb 18, 2012

That structure is referred to as ''accidental'' when you forget something but not on purpose. It's very common to use and I hear it all the time. - michellech, Feb 18, 2012

You are right! I changed it from "la llave" to "las llaves" and forgot to change the conjugation of "olvidarse". Thanks! - Tosh, Feb 18, 2012

Answer 2

no puedes decir "se me olvidó las llaves". En español, el verbo y el sujeto concuerdan en número (es decir, singular o plural) la oración correcta es " se me olvidaron las llaves"

You are right! I changed it from "la llave" to "las llaves" and forgot to change the conjugation of "olvidarse". Thanks! - Tosh, Feb 18, 2012

you're wellcome. btw i'm from Spain. I know what i'm talking about - davidcbvalencia, Feb 18, 2012

Answer 3

I think that if you use "se" it makes the sentence more...impersonal, hence you don't want to put the blame on you. What I remember from when I learned this is:

If you say: Olvidé las llaves en mi coche. - > I forgot the keys in my car.

But if you say: Se me han/Se me habían olvidado las llaves en mi coche. -> I forgot the keys in my car. However, this implies that it wasn't your fault or that someone distracted you and that's why you forgot them.

I personally use "se me..." rarely but I still do - say if I forget something and I don't want it to sound really bad. Or maybe just make my sentence look a bit more complicated haha :D

Anyway, hope this is correct and that it helps! Not a native speaker so you might wanna wait for a reply from one.

Saludos!

"... it to sound really bad." - makes sense, thanks. The latter example I gave was from a sentence trying to achieve the same effect. - tomsky, Feb 18, 2012