Tuesday, January 6, 2015

Spanish Reflexive Verbs

In Spanish,  a  reflexive verb is a verb that you do to yourself. Reflexive verbs are easy to find because of three reasons...
Reason #1:  They have SE tacked on to the end of the verb (bañarse, ducharse, maquillarse)
Reason #2: A lot of the reflexive verbs are done in the bathroom ( bañarse means to bathe oneself. Ducharse means to shower owneself. Maquillarse means to put makeup on oneself.)
Reason# 3: A lot of the reflexive verbs are done in the bedroom ( dormirse means to go to sleep. leventarse means to get out of bed.)

When you conjugate a reflexive verb, the se part changes to its appropriate pronoun (me, te, se, nos, se)


Even though the se part is at the end of the verb, when you conjugate it, you put the  reflexive part in front of the conjugated verb. (me baño means I wash myself)


To keep reflexive verbs lined up, I think like this:
Reflexive Verb should make you think of an RV. Often times RVs have little trailers. So this is what I picture when I think of Reflexive Verbs

An easy way to remember Spanish reflexive verbs
When you conjugate the reflexive verb just imagine stopping the RV,  unloading the trailer and putting  the pronouns in front of the RV. By the way, the driver is saying that he scratches  himself.

2 comments:

  1. This is an impressive way to teach students (specially children) Spanish. I loved the diagram. Thanks for sharing. Keep posting the useful information.

    Best Regards,
    Junu

    ReplyDelete

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