Reflexive vs. Direct Object Pronouns
Me veo en el agua means 'I see myself in the water.' Nos veo en el agua means 'I see ourselves in the water.'
The above are examples of using 'Reflexive Pronouns'.
However, in an online lesson over Reflexive Pronouns, it was said that 'Te veo en el agua' means 'I see you in the water.' Should this be an example of Direct Object Pronoun usage rather than Reflexive Pronoun usage? And, when using Reflexive Pronouns, should me, te, se, nos, os and se agree with the subject for which the action is being done? In other words, should veo only be used with Me and Nos; vee used only with Se and Se (ellos, ellas, uds.); vemos used only with Nos, etc? Would using vemos in an example of Reflexive Pronoun usage look like this: Nos vemos en el agua? And using vemos in an example of Direct Object Pronoun usage look like this: Lo vemos en el water? (Lo vemos en el agua could mean 'we see the dog in the water.) I think maybe the confusion in the online video I watched was due to 'te' being the same for the Direct Object Pronoun and Reflexive Pronoun. Am I anywhere near correct in my assumptions??
2 Answers
"Nos veo" is NOT reflexive. "Me veo" is. To be reflexive the direct object and the subject have to be the same person.
"Nos veo" meaning "I see us" cannot be reflexive because the subject and object are different. Here "nos" is merely the direct object.
Grammatically there is no such thing as "reflexive pronoun" or "reflexive verb" and no dictionary that I know of describes them this way. To think of it this way just causes confusion. It´s less confusing to think of it as a verb being used reflexively or not.
Te veo en el agua / te ves en el agua (the second sentence shows reflexive action, as Daniela mentions, direct object pronoun and subject are the same person).
