Reflexive verbs… continued
We are into our second week of learning about reflexive verbs in Spanish and have got as far as looking at one example – namely ‘me lavo’ (‘I wash myself’, or as is more usual in English ‘I have a wash’). We have seen that the subject ‘yo’ has been omitted and that the object ‘me’ means ‘myself’ and goes in front of the verb. This is more fully explained in last week’s article.
Sticking to the washing theme for a moment, most of us, these days stretch to having a shower, and again in Spanish this is expressed as a reflexive verb. The verb ‘to shower’ is ‘duchar’ and can be used in the standard way as is ‘Ducho a los niños’ (‘I shower the children’). However, it is more often used reflexively – ‘me ducho por la mañana’ (‘I shower myself in the morning’ or ‘I have a shower in the morning’), remembering that ‘me’ means ‘myself’ and is the object of the verb. In a fuller form it is ‘yo me ducho’.
If you think about it most of the things we do in the morning we do to ourselves before we face the general public, and so ‘I get up’ is also a reflexive verb. This is how it works. The verb is ‘levantar’ which means ‘to raise’ or ‘to lift’. If you take a moment to look in the dictionary, you will find that ‘levantar’ is listed, followed by ‘levantarse’, which you will see translates as ‘to get up’. The literal meaning is ‘to lift oneself up’ as the ‘se’ part tacked on the end is the reflexive particle ‘oneself ’.
Once the verb conjugates, that is changes according to different subjects, then that ‘se’ (or equivalent) pops in front of the verb, like this: ‘Yo me levanto’ or ‘me levanto’ (I get up, or literally ‘I lift myself up’). I hope this is making some sense! Now we can put together a whole sentence ‘Normalmente me levanto a los siete, pero a veces me levanto a las diez’ (‘I usually get up at seven o’clock but sometimes I get up at ten’).
So far we have only looked at the ‘I’ form, that is the ‘first person’ form, but of course we also need to be able to say ‘yourself’ ‘himself’ etc. We will stick to the verb ‘levantarse’ and see how it changes.
Me levanto nos levantamos Te levantas os levantáis Se levanta se levantan
All of those little words are reflexive pronouns, so translate literally like this: ‘me’ - myself, ‘te’ -yourself, ‘se’ - himself, herself, yourself (formal) oneself, ‘nos’ - ourselves, ‘os’ - yourselves’ and ‘se’ - themselves, yourselves (formal). For some reason whenever I teach this in a class a few people tell me that they have never heard of the word ‘os’ before, almost as though they think I might be making it up! I can assure everyone that ‘os’ is a perfectly common and correct Spanish word and it means ‘yourselves’ in the familiar plural form. If I was talking to a couple I might ask: ‘¿A qué hora os levantáis?’ to which they might reply ‘Nos levantamos a las 8’ or perhaps ‘Mind your own business what’s it got to do with you?’ See you next week for more reflections on reflexives.