Imperfect Past Tense
Is "comía" a reflexive verb? Should it read: 1.) Yo comía fruta. 2.) Me comía fruta 3.) A me comía fruta. ?
2 Answers
Comía, as I think you know, is the imperfect past tense of comer. All reflexive verbs, when you see them in the dictionary end with the suffix -se. Since you are talking about comía, which comes from comer, no, comer is not reflexive. There is, however, the verb comerse which is the pronominal version of comer.
Notice that comerse is pronominal rather than reflexive. This is because it does not act in a reflexive way - at all - but it is similar to reflexive verbs in that it has a required pronoun when it is used. In fact, the word pronominal comes from pronombre - which is the Spanish word for pronoun.
Comerse is one of several pronominal verbs in Spanish that can be used to intensify the action of the verb.
Me comí una manzana.
I ate up the whole apple!
Note that If comerse were reflexive the following sentence would mean "I used to eat myself."
Me comía.
The above sentence does not exist in Spanish. With comerse you must mention a specific quantity of food as I did in my example with "una manzana" (for its primary meaning)
Now, on to the second part of your question:
1) Yo comía fruta. Would be the only correct way to say this.
And if it is clear from context that you are talking about yourself, rather than some third person (he, she) who ate the apple, you would not use the pronoun Yo in Spanish. You could just say "Comía fruta"
Depending on the context, in English, this would usually be translated as "I used to eat fruit" or "I was eating fruit"
If you just wanted to say "I ate fruit yesterday" then you would use comí - the preterite.
To use comerse you can't just say "fruit" You have to use a specific quantity of food such as: "an apple" "the pizza" "four hamburgers" etc.
"Comía" is the past imperfect of "comer". "Comer" is not reflexive. It is transitive.
You will see "comerse" with frequency, however. I don't know my terms very well, but I don't think it is reflexive (strictly speaking) in:
"Me comía todo lo que se me puso enfrente." "I used to eat everything that was put in front of me."
"Comía todo lo que se me puso enfrente." "I used to eat everything that was put in front of me."
The difference between the two phrases is that the first emphasizes that "I used to eat everything". "I stuffed myself." "I was so hungry that I ate....."
The second phrase is more of a simple statement. It doesn't convey the same urgency as the first.
