Learn the answer to the question 'Can I use "se" reciprocally?'
Get this lesson’s key vocab, their translations and pronunciations. Sign up for your Free Lifetime Account Now and get 7 Days of Premium Access including this feature.
Unlock Lesson Notes and Transcripts for every single lesson. Sign Up for a Free Lifetime Account and Get 7 Days of Premium Access.
| Ask a teacher, lesson 25 - How can I use the pronoun se reciprocally? |
| Hi everybody! Rosa here. Welcome to Ask a Teacher, where I’ll answer some of your most common Spanish questions. |
| The question for this lesson is… |
| How can I use the pronoun se reciprocally? |
| In this lesson, we’re going to focus on another common and important usage of the pronoun se. Okay, let's go! |
| We can see the reciprocal pronoun se when we have two or more subjects who are doing the same action to each other. Here, se would function as the direct object, but will be the indirect object if there’s another direct object that is formally expressed. |
| Let’s take, for example, Carlos y Juan se pelean, meaning "Carlos and Juan fight (with each other)." Here se acts as the direct object because the “thing” that they are fighting is “themselves.” |
| Another example would be Los amigos se escriben cartas, literally meaning "The friends write letters (among them)." Here, the direct object is cartas “letters” which is the thing that they’re writing, and se acts as the indirect object as it’s to whom the action goes. |
| A helpful tip to identify this kind of se is to add el uno al otro meaning "to each other," el uno con el otro, literally meaning "one with the other," mutuamente meaning "mutually," or recíprocamente meaning "reciprocally," to the end of the sentence. If the sentence's meaning doesn't change, we need to use reciprocal se. |
| How was this lesson? Pretty interesting right? |
| Do you have any more questions? Leave them in the comments and I’ll try to answer them! Bye everyone! |
| ¡Hasta pronto! “See you soon!” |
Comments
Hide