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Old January 31, 2009, 07:50 PM
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Join Date: Nov 2008
Location: California, USA
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Native Language: American English
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Quote:
Originally Posted by laepelba View Post
Thanks, literacola! This really helps. A couple of quick questions about what you wrote here. First of all, you said that reflexive is only something done to oneself. So the example of "Te despierto" or "Te despierto a ti" for "I wake you up" is not considered reflexive, but still uses the pronouns similarly, right?

And about the word that you mentioned, "despedirse" ... really it's considered reflexive? You say goodbye to something ... and you're doing it to yourself? That's interesting. Could you please give me a couple of sentences that use the term despedirse (de) so that I can consider its use? Thank you again!! ¡¡Gracias otra vez!!
To question number one, yes and no. While te is both an indirect object pronoun and a reflexive pronoun that can be used in both situations, you can not use a reflexive pronoun in place of an indirect object pronoun and vice versa.

IO Pronouns are Me, Te, Le, Nos, Os, Les, and Se (which is just used in place of le or les when there is a DO pronoun that begins with an L following it.).

Reflexive pronouns are Me, Te, Se, Nos, and Os.

Notice that in reflexive usage, Se is used for all of the 3rd person forms and the formal second person.

In those examples, the subject of the sentence is not receiving anything in the statement.

Yo te despierto. I wake you up.

Notice that the subject (I) and the direct object (you) are not the same person. Therefore the action is not reflected back onto the subject, it is instead projected onto another object.

Yo me despierto I wake(myself) up.

Notice now that the pronoun matches the subject of the sentence. I am reflecting the action of waking up back onto myself, and not onto someone or something else.



I am not too sure about the actual use of despedir in regard to how often it is used by speakers. Here is an example

Nos despedimos de ellas. We said goodbye to the girls.
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