Spanish reflexive verbs

Even if you’re just starting to listen to, or read, Spanish, you’ll probably have come across the word ‘se’ a lot already. And you might be thinking: What the Dickens does ‘se’ mean?
Well, one of the main uses of ‘se’ is with reflexive verbs. In fact, ‘se’ is a reflexive pronoun. (it’s also an object pronoun, but that’s another story).
We had a quick look at reflexive verbs in our listening exercise on the beautiful old colonial town of San Cristobal de las casas. Here we’ll go into more detail.

What are reflexive verbs?

In theory, reflexive verbs describe actions which the subject does to himself (or herself, or itself). That’s why they’re called reflexive, dude!

• lavarse – wash oneself
• peinarse – brush one’s hair
• vestirse – get dressed

As you can see, we use reflexive verbs for many everyday actions.   In fact, some of the first Spanish phrases that students learn are reflexive:

• me llamo Thelma.
• te llamas Louise.

However, in Spanish certain reflexive verbs are ‘reflexive’ in form only. Some can be used in a transitive sense, which means they are verbs which are done by one person/thing to another person/thing.  Others describe actions which we can’ t honestly say are carried out and received by the same person, like ‘falling’:

• Me comí un pastel enorme. – I ate a big cake.
• Mi abuela se cayó ayer. – My grandmother fell over yesterday.
• Se le cayó encima un árbol. – A tree fell on him/her.
• Me peleaba con ella – I fought with her.
• Me crié en el sur de California – I grew up in southern California. 

Conjugating reflexive verbs

When conjugating reflexive verbs you need to remember to use the correct reflexive pronoun. Let’s look at the verb lavarse (wash oneself)

• Me lavo
• Te lavas
• Se lava
• Nos lavamos
• Os laváis
• Nos lavamos

Be careful with ‘se’.

The reflexive pronoun Se is used for the he/she/it forms of verbs and for the usted (the polite form of you) forms:

• Usted se ducha cada mañana.
  You take a shower every morning.
• Ella se ducha una vez a la semana.
  She takes a shower once a week.

And be careful with the infinitive!

You need the correct reflexive pronoun even if you are using the reflexive verb in the infinitive form:

• Quiero quedarme en casa.
  I want to stay at home.
• ¿Quieres quedarte en casa?
  Do you want to stay at home?
• Queremos quedarnos en casa.
  We want to stay at home.

It took me years of living in Spain (Cadaqués) to get my head around this. When you use the infinitive of a reflexive verb in a sentence, you still need to choose the reflexive pronoun which corresponds to the subject of the verb. The phrases with the infinitive can also be formed with a different word order:

• Me quiero quedar en casa.
• Nos queremos quedar en casa.

This bit’s a little strange too…

Understood everything so far? Now look at the following sentences:

• Me cepillo los dientes.
  I brush my teeth.
• Te lavas la cara.
  You wash your face.
• Sandra se ha roto la pierna.
  Sandra has broken her leg.

Yep, Spanish prefers reflexive forms in these cases, where we are talking about parts of the body.  In English we would normally use the possessive pronouns instead.

Each other

One final point to note about reflexive verbs in Spanish. They are also used for reciprocal actions. In this respect they usually correspond to English phrases with ‘each other’

• Se miraban entre risas.
  They looked at each other, laughing.
• Nos abrazamos entre lágrimas.
  We tearfully hugged each other.

Anything else I need to know about Reflexive Verbs?

Not really! We’ve covered pretty much all you need to know about Spanish reflexive verbs. However, you need to make sure that you can distinguish the use of ‘se’ as a reflexive pronoun from its use as an indirect object pronoun.