"Se me olvido" y "se me acabo"

Question

I am struggling with understand the structure of phrases such as "se me olvidó" and "se me acabó."

If I want to say "I forgot my books at home" I believe it would be "se me olvidaron mis libros en casa" but I don't understand the use of the "se" at the start of the phrase.

Also, if I want to say "when did you run out of the drop?" I believe it would be "cuando se le acabó la gota" but again, I don't understand the use of the "se" at the start of the phrase.

If you could explain the structure of these sentences I would greatly appreciate it. Also, if I did not write the sentences correctly, feel free to correct them.

Thank you!

Just to be clear, you would use te instead of le in the second sentence to refer to you unless you were speaking formally / ustedes. - DilKen, Jun 2, 2017

Also, there should be an accent on cuándo and question marks at the beginning and end of the Spanish question. - DilKen, Jun 2, 2017

Welcome to SpanishDict, Kevin. - rac1, Jun 2, 2017

Gracias por ayudarme - Kevin8460, Jun 3, 2017

Answer 1

Kevin:

Se me olvidaron mis libros en casa.

This is passive se. The books are the passive subject. Since "the books" is plural, the verb is conjugated in 3rd person plural.

Se is the passive marker / pronoun.

Literally, the books were forgotten at home and this happened to me. (poor me)

In English, we would probably just say "I forgot my books at home" and everyone would know that we didn't do it intentionally, because hardly anyone forgets something like that on purpose. If we said I left the books at home then there might be some doubt. This is just the way they do it in Spanish to distance oneself from the misdeed. While we don't typically do this with forget, it is common with some other verbs in English. The window broke. (even though I might have thrown a ball through it.)

The other sentence is also Se passive.

The drop was finished. (passive) It doesn't say WHO finished the drop, just that it was gone. The "me" is an indirect object because the drop being gone / having been finished effected me. I don't know why gota was used instead of gotas. If we're talking about some medicine that ran out, surely we would refer to it as drops instead of drop. I'm not sure if this would be any different in Spanish.

Answer 2

See my new post on this point of grammar. "unexpected occurrences, using se"

Answer 3

Excelente pregunta

olvidarse + DE algo:

Me olvidé DE pagar los impuestos

I forgot to pay the taxes

olvidársele algo a alguien:

Se me olvidaron los libros en casa

Se me olvidó otra vez que sólo yo te quise (a famous popular song by Juan Gabriel)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g5rsnxJWNkM

I forgot agian that only I loved you.

I hope this link can explain it better:olvidar(se)