Lesson 47: Past Tense: The Line in the Past with Reflexive Verbs

We've looked at how to say 'ar' verbs when describing 'a period of time in the past (a 'line' in the past)'. Now we'll cover how this works with reflexive verbs.

There is no real way to know exactly which verbs are reflexive. You can make a common sense guess that if we can use "gets" in English - "It gets contaminated" - then it is probably reflexive in Spanish.

However there are plenty of exceptions to this but it is something that is learnt over time with plenty of practice and getting it wrong won't mean that you are not understood most of the time.

That said we'll look at more verbs here but we'll start with a recap.

Cena and Cenar

Here is a reminder of the basic 'aba' sound that goes with 'ar' verbs when we change them to describe something that:

happened in the past over a period of time.
something that was happening when something else happened

Spanish	English
La cena	The dinner
Cenar	To dine / to eat dinner
Cenaba	I/he/she was having dinner

Quemar - to burn

OK - let's get reflexive!

Spanish	English
Quemaba la cena	I/she/he was burning the dinner
Él quemaba la cena	He was burning the dinner
Usted quemaba la cena	You (formal) were burning the dinner

So here we have [WHO] + [DOING WHAT].

But if we want to say "The dinner was burning" we need to say what it was burning. In English you can say it - "The dinner was burning itself" - but we assume the "itself" so we just say "The dinner was burning".

In Spanish we need to state the "itself"

Spanish	English
La cena se quemaba	The dinner was burning (itself)
Se quemaba la cena	The dinner was burning (itself)

Because we have defined everything the order of the sentence is flexible.

So whenever we are talking about something happening to a thing its a clue that we are going to need to be reflexive.

Spanish	English
Me quemo en el sol	I get burnt in the sun

'Quemo en el sol' would mean "I burn something in the sun" so then it is unclear if it is you or something you were burning.

Now you can say:

Spanish	English
El sol me quema	The sun burns me
Me quema el sol	The sun burns me

Romper - to break

Here's another very useful relexive verb.

Spanish	English
Lo rompo	I break it
Se rompe todo el tiempo	It breaks (itself) all the time
Se rompen todo el tiempo	They break (themselves) all the time

And as we talked about earlier we can remember this 'se' because it is the first two letters of the English word "self".

Spanish	English
Esos se rompen todo el tiempo	Those break (themselves) all the time

There is no doubt about it knowing when to use reflexive verbs is a tricky one but the first step is to be able to recognize them so when you read it or hear it you can say "Ah, that one is reflexive!"

Spanish	English
Se transforma	It changes (itself)
Se rompe	It breaks (itself)
Cambia	It changes

Lesson 48: Past Tense: The Line in the Past with 'er' and 'ir' verbs