Comer, Tomar, Beber reflexive?
I was told that these verbs are reflexive, however when I encounter them in the Spanish lessons and tapes I use, they are not reflexive. Which is it?
3 Answers
Don't trust anything you hear. Look it up and then take what you find with a grain of salt.
I took formal Spanish classes for six months and only once did one of my teachers mention pronomial verbs, yet they are far more common than reflexives. Pronomials are verbs that look like reflexives but the meaning of the verb changes and the action is not reflexive.
For example: Comerse =
comerse pronomial verb 1. to eat (alimentos)
en ese restaurante se come muy bien -> the food is very good at that restaurant
se comió los tres platos -> he had all three courses
comerse las uñas -> to bite one's nails
comerse a alguien con los ojos o con la mirada (figurative) -> to be unable to keep one's eyes off somebody
¿y eso cómo se come? (figurative) -> and what are we/am I supposed to make of that?
tu amigo está para comérselo (informal) -> your friend's gorgeous
to eat up (desgastar) (recursos) ; to corrode (metal)
el sol se comió los colores de la ropa -> the sun made the clothes fade
to take, to capture (en los juegos de tablero)
to swallow (palabras, texto)
se comió un párrafo -> she missed out a paragraph se va a comer sus palabras (informal) -> she'll have to eat her words
Now, logically speaking if bañarse is to bath yourself then comerse should be to feed yourself. But languages are not logical.
It is hard when a single verb has many meanings and then has a pronomial component on top of that.
Good luck in your studies, and use the translate button above to use the three dictionaries available here.
Gringo's answer highlights something a lot of people have trouble with: that adding "se" to the end of a verb can change its meaning. I also think Gringo was hinting at this:
What I do (and what I recommend to do) is to learn comerse as a completely different verb from comer. Sure their meanings are related, but they're both used in totally different expressions and uses.
One of comerse's meanings is "to eat up". So me como el desayuno is "I ate up my breakfast. Comer cannot be used in that context, so I treat it as a totally separate verb.
Basically, this requires a mindset change that took me a long time to realize, but it really helpful once you understand it. The change is that adding se to a verb makes it a totally different verb with different meanings.
Another example is hacer which means "to do/make", along with a bunch of other meanings. Hacerse is a different verb meaning "to become via effort". Lumping the two together only causes confusion.
Dear narzipan,
Gringojrf"s answer is very good and you should come back to it after you have had more practice using Spanish. You seem to be at a stage where you are learning the various "forms" of Spanish verbs. Reflexive and Pronomial are words that describe the conjugation of a verb using a set of pronouns: me, te, se, nos, os, se with the verb so that the action of the verb goes back to (reflects back to) the person doing the action (the subject of the verb). Many, many Spanish verbs have reflexive forms, but that does not mean that is the only form that is used. You won't be able to wrap you mind around this until you see many of the reflexive versus non-reflexive forms of the verbs in use (and translation). So be patient and above all remember as gringojrf said: "But languages are not logical."
