Help with "se te cae"

Question

Recently I saw this sentence on Facebook "Cuando se te cae un hermano", but i can't understand what "se te" means in this sentence. I know it's something like "when you brother falls(dies)" but can someone explain to me what se te means?

Answer 1

The traduction in english would be "when you drop your brother". "se" here is part of the verb "caerse" which is the verb we use in spanish when you mean that you drop something. And "te" refers to who drop that thing. In this case who drop the brother is "you" ,that's why you have to use "te". If instead of "you" had been "I" ,you would have had to write "me" rather than "te".You can see some examples in which I use the verb "caerse" below, I hope this examples make you clear when we use "caerse" in spanish:

• Se me cayó el vaso de agua (I dropped a glass of water).
• Cuando se te caen las llaves (when you drop your keys).
• Se le están cayendo los pantalones. (he/she)
• Se nos cayó la botella al entrar aquí. (we)
• Siempre se les caen las monedas. (they)

Answer 2

"Cuando se te cae un hermano"

I would not have expected the "se" there, as I have seen caer rather than caerse to talk about people fallen in battle.

Cayeron muchos soldados en la batalla.

Normally with caerse- it implies fell of its own doing- often translated as fall down.

Se cayó de su bicicleta- he fell off his bike.

It can be subtle and I would be interested in what feel it gives a native speaker.

Adding se to morir- morirse- gives more a sense of passing away, slipping away, then as opposed to dying. Again it is subtle. But that is not the case with caer, I don't think.

I don't have the context. It to me almost gives the sense of him letting you down (in which case the te still indicates you are affected, like below). So my guess without context would have been he let you down, he did not hold up his end of the deal. Or more like he dropped, fell out, collapsed.

The te is an indirect object, implying that it has affected you. He died on you. Or such that maybe is not easy to put simply in English. But it indicates you are an affected party by the occurrence- you are not a neutral, unbiased person.

I am not a native speaker, these are just my thoughts, and I would really appreciate native speaker input on some of the questions I raised.

Well i saw this sntence together with a picture of a tiger in his cage, while a man in a tiger costume was carried away by ambulance men - Silverbullet, Jan 8, 2017

From the tiger attacking him, or just falling ill- which would be the context with se- he succumbed, it was not something external that got him? - bosquederoble, Jan 8, 2017

Since Juaner is a native speaker, I would go with his answer. :) - bosquederoble, Jan 9, 2017