#impersonal se vs reflexive se

[mylanguageclasses]

Impersonal "Se" in Spanish Grammar

Introduction The impersonal “se” is a crucial aspect of Spanish grammar that allows speakers to express general statements without specifying a subject. It is commonly used in formal speech, instructions, advertisements, and everyday conversation. Understanding impersonal “se” enhances fluency and helps learners sound more natural in Spanish. This guide will explore the meaning, usage, rules,…

[spanishskulduggery]

Can you offer a better understanding of how verbs like acabarse/"to be out of" are constructed, and why? Bing's Copilot ai described this as a "pronominal verbs with dative construction" but it took 20-30 minutes to elicit this so I'm not sure if the term is correct. To illustrate the verb's unique construction to other blog readers here are some sentences showing its use:  “Se les acabó el pan” meaning “They are out of bread.”

Yes, kind of correct

Pronomial is the linguistic term for a verb that uses reflexive endings [me, te, se, nos, os] and in the infinitive form they end in -se

As an example, the dictionary will show ir "to go" then irse "to go away" or something like that, where irse is a little different from ir

But pronomial is an umbrella term - reflexives [where the subject/object are the same, like afeitarse "to shave (oneself)"], reciprocal reflexives [two or more subjects doing something to one another like abrazarse "to hug (one another)" or conocerse "to meet/know one another"], and then the weirder ones which is where you get into acabarse and verbs like that

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What also makes this confusing is that se is used in other situations like passive voice or impersonal expressions so it isn't just limited to this. And all of this is fairly advanced grammar

Side Note: Just to clarify, the basic textbook will tell you about "reflexives" where someone does something to oneself, but they then don't further explain all the uses of "pronomials" in general - so if you take classes you might understand "reflexives", but not "pronomial"

What I'm going to discuss is mainly "ethical dative" and "superfluous dative" but all these linguistic terms sort of come up together so it's like you look up one, you find all of them... they run together a lot so it can be confusing

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With the weird ones, you often get into what they call "ethical dative"

First, "dative" in linguistic terms usually refers to indirect objects - to whom or for whom something is done. With "ethical dative" (dativo ético) it means that a verb will take a typically reflexive ending to show a "significance" to the person it refers to

They usually take on a secondary meaning

As an example, ir and then irse for "to go" and then "to go away/leave". Another is dormir "to sleep", then dormirse "to fall asleep"

acabar by itself is "to end/carry out", while acabarse is "to run out"

A big one that can be confusing is that native speakers often use comerse with food to show they enjoy it... so you can see me como la pizza "I'm eating the pizza" rather than simply como "I eat". It adds a little extra something

The weird ones like this are harder to translate or explain, but I try to tell people to think of it like prepositional expressions, or expressions that add a little extra word that changes the feeling

morir "to die" vs. morirse "to pass away", or caer "to fall" vs. caerse "to fall down / to sink", or quedar "to remain" vs. quedarse "to stay behind" or "to be left"

A big one is olvidar "to forget"; many Spanish speakers will prefer to use olvidarse (de) because it comes out more like "to slip one's mind" or "to become forgotten" rather than someone actively forgetting

And similarly for weird ones... acordar is usually "to agree" or "to make agree/an arrangement".... but then acordarse (de) is "to remember". In school people usually teach you recordar which is "to recall/to remind" as "to remember" because acordarse takes extra explaining

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The se + indirect object + verb is called "superfluous dative", sometimes called "dative of interest"

It's a pronomial verb (i.e. it uses the reflexive endings), but it shows directly who gets affected by it

The example I use most often for explaining this is romper "to break":

Rompí el coche/carro/auto. = I broke the car. [on purpose] Se rompió el coche/carro/auto. = The car broke down. [on its own] Se me rompió el coche/carro/auto. = The car up and died on me.

With se me rompió el coche it's that "the car broke down" - on its own - and me "I" am personally affected by this

People use these expressions a lot to show a sense of passivity, things happening on their own that then deeply affect other people. It's partly a way to say "not my fault" (which is what I mean by passivity), but also to show who is most affected - it happens a lot with involuntary things, things that are inconvenient, unexpected, surprises (good or bad), and sometimes strong emotions

se me rompió el coche is literally "the car broke itself to me" but an English speaker would more likely say "the car died on me" or even suddenly "the car up and died on me"

Similarly, se me olvidó "I forgot it" is more often translated as "it slipped my mind", literally it's "it forgot itself to me" - it shows that it's not intentional. And se me olvidaron las llaves for plural, "I completely forgot about the keys" or "the keys slipped my mind" rather than making it seem like you purposefully forgot them

These expressions show up a lot with inconvenience . Buses "leave people", time "runs out" on people, things "break" on their own "to people"

Another common one: se me durmieron las piernas is "my legs fell asleep on me", like "my legs went numb" - the legs [piernas] fell asleep [se durmieron] and "I" didn't really want that or do it on purpose but now the situation affects me [me]

You could also use it with people, like if a teacher had students falling asleep - se me durmieron los estudiantes "the students were falling asleep on me"

In the case of acabar it can be many things "running out", like se nos acaba el tiempo "time is running out (for us)" or "our time is running out"

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Note: People will also use possessives in the translations for the se + indirect object + verb ones; like "our time is running out", "my legs fell asleep", "my car broke down"... it's not a literal possessive in the Spanish but just keep an eye out

[ukfrislandembassy]

Frislandic Verbal Morphology Part 2

OK, let's move onto voice morphology, which kinda follows on nicely as kind of a tag on to stem-formation more generally.

As with most languages, verb roots may be either unmarked transitive or intransitive. However, the language generally lacks ambitransitive verbs, making use of overt voice markers to increase or decrease valency.

Furthermore, Frislandic in general dislikes unergative verbs, preferring basic intransitives to be unaccusative. Thus, for a verb such as sjæ 'burn', the only reading of the bare stem accessible is of an object which is on fire; exclaiming 'it burns!' when you are the person on fire/being burnt is not grammatical Frislandic (excluding varieties that have been influence by languages such as English with looser transitivity constraints).

The first valency-changing operation is the causative, marked by a suffix -l. As with causatives across languages more generally, this is primarily used to derive monotransitive verbs from intransitives, for the simple reason that causativising a transitive does awkward things to the argument structure (we'll discuss how to deal with that below). Thus sjæ 'it burns/is burning' → jæ-l-a 'I set it on fire', me-jæ-l 'it causes me to burn/it burns me'; biz 'they know, understnad, comprehend' (technically an intransitive, but that's for another post) → viz-l-a 'I teach them/cause them to understand'; ikk 'it runs out' → ikk-l-a 'I drain it' and so on.

The second valency-changing operation is the applicative, which is marked by a prefix d-. This raises an oblique argument to core status, but the semantics are somewhat variable. As it is clearly etymologically related to the dative case suffix -ð, it has much of the same semantics, including:

recipients: ke-ð-sa-v 'I give (it) to you' (but note ke-ron-a 'I give to you'; maybe a discussion on the semantics of sa vs. son might make a post someday); am be-d-llang-end 'I am telling you (all)'; ø-ð-akkaðon-sj-a 'I painted him with colours'.

beneficiaries: me-ð-arað-te 'they bore [it] for me'; am ke-ð-keteljan-end 'I'm boiling the kettle for you'; ke-ð-dokkott-sj-a 'I made you a doll'.

maleficiaries: me-ð-kajn-te 'they died on me'; me-ð-sjæ-nd 'it's burning me'; me-ð-ikk-te 'I have run out of/lost it'

associated locations: k-i-ð-makkvæd-a 'I will visit you'; se-d-gwng-end 'They're staying at ours'; ke-ð-mas-sj-a 'I sat([down) by you'.

This form may also take the reflexive possessive to produce the 'autobenefactive' prefix otte-. This appears to be in the process of becoming a reflexive, though other strategies are available (to be discussed in a future post) and there still needs to be some kind of benefactive/malefactive semantics, e.g. not otte-sjiriv-sj-a 'I wrote a note to myself', gængævl, otte-gangav-l! 'physician, heal thyself!'

The final valency-changing operation has been described as variously a passive, mediopassive, middle or impersonal; fundamentally it demotes an agent argument and (with transitive verbs) raises the erstwhile object to subject position. Most basically this is marked with a -t suffix, and remains as such in the 3rd person and in the progressive and indirect (which don't take/replace person inflections).

Gal mijk-et æte zie 'God is worshipped everywhere'

Upp bwl-t-end ge zin-er 'You are being ordered to disperse'

N'usk nesj-t-ið 'the bag (was) split open'

However, it combines idiosyncratically with the 2nd person singular and the 1st/2nd person plural. In the case of the former, the old Grassman's Law rears its head again as the aspiration dissimilation gives -ðek (a rule which must have applied to verb roots too and still is found in some related derivations, e.g. uos 'food' from uok 'eat' + -s (-*tʰ-i), where deaspirated /kʰ/ resultes in a historic /g~ɣ/ which is then lost: see e.g. Kampaj oahs /oa̯ɣs/ [ˈoɐ̯xs] where the velar fricative is retained (dialectal morphology is going to get a separate post or two for sure). With the 1st/2nd person plural, there is an idiosyncratic metathesis of I-r + -t to I-st. We'll come back to the person marking system in more detail in a future post.

These three formatives may be combined, with the (medio)passive following the causative in suffixing order. This ordering reflects the semantics: Frislandic has a morphological passive causative ('be made to X') but not a caustive passive ('cause to/let be X'). Part of this is the general dislike of unergativity, as in many cases a simple caustive serves as the equivalent of a causative passive anyway, e.g. tæ-l can both mean 'let fall/drop' and also 'cause to be dropped/let be dropped', which aren't semantically all that distinct. Specificity can be acheived by a biclausal complementisation strategy with sa, e.g. sa ge tæ 'let it/have it fall' (literally 'put [it] so that it falls') vs. sa ge tæ-t 'let/have it be dropped'.

The applicative interacts with these two forms in more complex ways. This is in part due to is morphological position, not having a defined ordering relative to the causative and passive (being a prefix) and partly because of its complex mix of functions, often not being entirely clear how it fits into the case structure of the sentence. For example, a form such as ke-ð-nab-l-a is potentially ambiguous between 'I make [them] go to you' (a causative of ke-ð-nab 'they go to you') and 'I make [them] go on your behalf/in your place' (an applicative of ∅-nab-l-a 'I make them go'). In this case context is normally sufficient to disambiguate the two functions, but once again the biclausal structure can serve to disambiguate if desired, thus ∅-ra-v ge ke-ð-nab 'I make them go to you' vs. ke-ð-sa-v ge nab 'I made them go on your behalf/in your place'

However, things become especially complicated when it is noted that with transitive verbs a demoted (nominal) agent normally takes the dative case (e.g. ne zott-eð uok-l-a ne kell 'I made the man (zott) eat the fish (kell)'; you can have full glosses when I start talking syntax). By implication, this might be taken to indicate that pronominal demoted agents should take the applicative. In fact this is not usually an issue. The key detail is that with causatives a demoted pronominal transitive subject (of a basic transitive verb) is typically expressed using simply the pronominal prefix, without accompanying applicative. This is generally possible because causativising a verb which already had a prefixed pronominal object is generally dispreferred (in keeping with its primary usage as a transitiviser with intransitives): thus m'uok-l-ek 'you make me eat' (from uok-a 'I eat) is fine, but ?me-luok-el ukkeð 'they make me choose you' (from ke-luok-a 'I choose you'), while notionally possible, would seem off; once again, a biclausal me-ra ge ke-luok-a 'they make me choose you' would be used instead.

As a result, this frees up the form with the applicative prefix to mark a retained applied argument instead of the demoted subject. Thus ke-ð-llang-el [ameð] 'they make [me] talk to you' (as opposed to me-lang-el 'they make me talk'); se-d-bir-el-te [torok] 'they deprived us of [mercy]' (literally 'they caused [mercy] to be missing from us'). And of course a biclausal alternative is available too, e.g. me-ra ge ke-ð-llang-a 'they make me talk to you'; sa-te ge torok se-d-bir 'they deprived us of mercy' (and yes the uses of this complementiser ge are numerous and worthy of their own post too).

[rivkahstudies]

Spanish Grammar Resources

The lovely @studywithbyu​ came to looking for some help with Spanish grammar, so here is a little masterlist! (warning, not so little - long post ahead!) I highly suggest checking out both resources because they cover different things and one may provide the information in a better format for you.

Grammar with SpanishDict

A great resource with reliable translations and instruction! I go here instead of to Google Translate because I know it’s much more helpful and accurate. It also has forums for individual questions. 

Here is a list of all its lessons:

Adjectives

Descriptive adjectives (regular and irregular)

Adjective placement

Nationalities as adjectives

Short form adjectives (apocopation)

Possessive adjectives

Cardinal numbers (0-100)

Cardinal numbers (101+)

Ordinal numbers

Negatives and negation

Asking questions: interrogatives

Comparisons of inequality

Comparisons of equality

Superlatives - the best, worst, most, & least

Using adjectives as nouns

Relative adjectives (cuyo)

Demonstrative adjectives

Exclamatory words

Adverbs

Adverb forms and placement 

Articles

Definite article forms (regular and exceptions)

Definite Article Uses

Indefinite article forms (regular and irregular)

Indefinite article uses

Neuter article

Conjunctions

Conjunctions 

Gender

Masculine and feminine nouns

Professions and other nouns with both masculine and feminine forms

Number

Plural forms of nouns (regular and exceptions) 

Prepositions

Basic Prepositions

Basic por vs. para (motion vs. destination)

Contractions

Advanced por vs. para (DREEMS vs. PRODDS)

Advanced expressions with por and para

Pronouns

Subject pronouns (personal pronouns)

Spanish "you" - (tú, vos, usted, vosotros, ustedes)

Object pronouns (pronouns after prepositions)

Direct Object Pronouns

Direct object pronoun placement

Indirect Object Pronouns

Indirect object pronoun placement

Possessive pronouns

Neuter possessive pronouns

Using direct and indirect object pronouns together

Demonstrative pronouns

Relative pronouns (que, quien, el que, el cual)

Neuter relative pronouns (lo que, lo cual)

Impersonal se

Impersonal se vs. passive se

Passive se

Pronunciation

Spanish Alphabet and Pronunciation

Spanish vowels

Spanish syllables

Word stress

Written accents (tildes)

Spanish punctuation

Verbs

Infinitive forms and finding stems for regular verbs

Other uses for infinitives

Present Participles

Other uses for the present participle (gerundio)

Past participle regular forms and uses

Irregular and stressed past participles

Present perfect - Using haber with past participles

Present Tense Forms

Present tense spelling changes

Stem Changing Verbs

Irregular present tense

Verbs like gustar

Basic ser vs. estar - D.O.T. vs. Lo.Co.

Uses of ser: descriptions

Uses of ser: origins

Uses of ser: time

Uses of estar: Location

Uses of estar: condition

Informal future (ir + a + infinitive)

Imperfect Tense Forms

Spanish Preterite Tense Forms

Spelling changes in the preterit

Stem changes in the preterit

Verbs that change meaning in the preterit

Preterit vs. Imperfect - differences and signifier phrases

Affirmative informal (tú) commands

Negative Tú Commands

Formal Affirmative and Negative Commands

Subjunctive vs. Indicative

Wishes & wants in the subjunctive

Emotions with the subjunctive

Impersonal expressions with the subjunctive

Recommendations & requests with the subjunctive

Doubts & denial with the subjunctive

Ojalá with the subjunctive

Uncompleted or prospective actions with the subjunctive

Present Subjunctive Regular and Irregular Forms

Present Progressive Forms

Saber vs. Conocer

Pedir vs. preguntar (to ask)

Reciprocal verbs and pronouns

Reflexive Verbs and Pronouns

Active vs. passive voice

Nosotros commands

Indirect commands

Imperfect progressive

Simple future regular forms and uses

Simple future irregular and stem changing forms

Hacer with expressions of time

Conditional regular and irregular forms and uses

Imperfect Subjunctive

Future subjunctive forms and uses

Past perfect forms and uses

Preterit perfect

Present Perfect Subjunctive

Future perfect

Conditional perfect forms and uses

Past Perfect Subjunctive Forms

Future perfect subjunctive forms and uses

Verb structures (transitive, intransitive, pronominal)

Ir vs. irse

Verbal periphrasis

Indicative mood

Imperative mood

Copular Verbs

________________________________________________________________

Spanish Grammar @ StudySpanish.com

Nine units full of very useful grammar! I plan to use this one myself for a bit of self-instruction before I go to Catalonia. My favorite part is it gives you flashcard ideas and has review.

Here are the units and their topics:

UNIT ONE

1. Gender of Nouns I

2. Gender of Nouns II

3. Numbers: 1-10

4. Plural Forms of Nouns

5. Def. & Indef. Articles

6. The Verb Form "hay"

7. Subject Pronouns

8. Reg. Verbs I

9. Reg. Verbs II

10. Reg. Verbs III

11. Adjectives I

12. Adjectives II

13. Days of the Week

14. Numbers: 11-30

UNIT TWO

15. Ser and Estar I

16. Ser and Estar II

17. Ser and Estar III

18. Ser and Estar IV

19. Negation

20. Questions

21. Poss. Adjectives

22. Tener, venir

23. Tener que / Hay que

24. Exp. with "Tener"

25. Weather Expressions

26. The Personal "a"

27. Contractions

UNIT THREE

28. Stem-Changing Verbs: o:ue

29. Stem-Changing Verbs: e:ie

30. Stem-changing verbs: e:i

31. Estar, Ir, Dar

32. "Ir a" + infinitive

33. Acabar de

34. Volver a

35. Ordinal Numbers

36. Months, Seasons, and Dates

37. Comparisons of Inequality

38. Comparisons of Equality

39. Superlatives

UNIT FOUR

40. Pronouns as Objects of Prepositions

41. Dir. Object Pronouns I

42. Dir. Object Pronouns II

43. Dir. Object Pronouns III

44. Ind. Object Pronouns I

45. Ind. Object Pronouns II

46. Ind. Object Pronouns III

47. DO and IO Pronouns Together

48. Verbs Like Gustar

49. Present Progressive

50. Verbs with Irregular 1st Persons

UNIT FIVE

51. Saber vs Conocer / Pedir vs Preguntar

52. Numbers: 31-1000

53. Telling Time

54. Por and Para

55. Irreg. Comparatives

56. Demonstratives

57. Time Expressions With Hacer

58. Possessive Pronouns

59. Reflexive Verbs I

60. Reflexive Verbs II

61. Definite Article II

UNIT SIX

62. Pret. vs Imp. I

63. Preterite I

64. Imperfect I

65. Preterite II

66. Imperfect II

67. Pret. vs Imp. II

68. Preterite III

69. Imperfect III

70. Preterite IV

71. Preterite V

72. Preterite VI

73. Pret. vs Imp. III

74. Pret. vs Imp. Review

UNIT SEVEN

75. "Hace ..." to mean "ago"

76. Formation of Adverbs

77. Subjunctive I: Introduction

78. Subjunctive II: Conjugating regular and stem-changing verbs

79. Subjunctive III: Verbs that change orthographically

80. Subjunctive IV: Irregular verbs

81. Subjunctive V: Desire

82. Subjunctive VI: Ignorance, doubt

83. Subjunctive VII: Impersonal Expressions

84. Subjunctive VIII: Actions not yet completed

UNIT EIGHT

85. Rel. Pronouns - que

86. Rel. Pronouns - quien

87. Rel. Pronouns - el que and lo que

88. Rel. Adjective - cuyo

89. Rel. Pronouns and Adjectives - Review

90. Formal Commands

91. Inform. Commands - tú

92. Irreg. Commands - tú

93. Using Object Pronouns with Commands

94. Commands Review I

95. Informal Commands - vosotros

96. 1st Person Commands - nosotros

97. Indirect Commands

98. Commands Review II

UNIT NINE

99. Future

100. Past Participle

101. Present Perfect

102. Past Perfect

103. Future Perfect

104. Conditional

I hope this helps! 

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Some other good websites:

121Spanish

PracticingSpanish

Rocket Languages

And if you plan to practice writing and don’t have a native speaker or proficient learner to help, here’s a Spanish editor!

Spanish Checker

[kendrixtermina]

Voltron Cast vs. Personality types

Feel free to add & correct

Lance

Very Clearly ESxx. He’s practically “Extrovert problems” incarnate, poor boi, just wants to be liked & accepted.  

I’d say he has some Fe there but the degree of inappropriate jokes vs value judgements/policing suggests tertiary rather than dominant. ESTP then. 

Pretty much that common Fi PolR/ Fe tert problem of not realizing your own inclinations & opinions of yourself “count” & therefore  looking for external validation a lot. Adding to that is his crazy aim & knack for planning sneaky strategies on the fly, also he once mentioned he has a hard time sleeping if he gets all pumped off, having so much energy it needs to be burned off is a common Se dom issue, as is his concern with looks, status & “finer pleasures” & his competitive streak.

He’s an inert subtype, and enneagram wise he’s such an obvious 3w2 someone who never saw the show could tell just from me reblogging posts about him. He keeps making up roles for himself to play (”cool ninja sharpshooter”) & hoping they catch on with the others, though there’s also an angle of wanting to contribute & be needed. 

imma venture soc/sx but im not adamant on this.  Sanguine classic. 

Also very obvious oldham Inventive with sprinklings of Devoted and Dramatic. He’s also a dead-ringer Mercury-Venus. Also probably Thunderbird.

Gryffindor or Hufflepuff tho? There would probaby be hatstall, but ultimately I feel he would be a “grow into it” Gryffindor. 

The Red Lion only takes them Gryffindors BTW. Come on. Bravery? honor? No self-preservation? Likewise, the green Lion only takes Ravenclaws and the Yellow one only takes hufflepuffs. The recipe is probably more complicated with the other two tho. 

Hunk

The most obvious ISFJ to ever SiFe. 

He’s cautious & prefers the familiar, a good judge of character & may need to see things with their own eyes to grasp their full scope, but also has a big heart cares a lot. Hasthat “inferior Ne panic reaction” too. 

You kinda also see the “dexterous/practical” side of Si with his being a mechanic. The makers have described the contrast between him and pidge as the “figure it out & think it up” side of engineering vs the “buid it & make it work” side of it  which is basically N vs. S in a nutshell. 

Inert Subtype. Pudwudkie Hufflepuff. Nuff said. A 9w1, probably, though with a notable 6w5 fix. sp/soc. Phlegmatic. Venus. Clearly has some Sensitive style in him but he’s not all that shy & fluttery so there’s probably some stabilizing influence there. Not wholly sure if it’s some Leisurely or something else

Allura

Preddy much ESTJ. Brave, dutiful, action-oriented, bossy, fortright, yells a lot, can be rigid sometimes, we know the drill.   

Contact subtype. Mars-Jupiter af. srly that’s just a holistic sumup of her character.  Choleric. (ChlorSan prolly) 2w1  soc/sp? I do think soc  is right & she does have that “politcian-y” quality.  

She’s ever the altrustic helper ready to put her life in danger, insists they answer every distress call,  and has this ‘diplomatic important organization leader’ thing going on that social 2s do.The w1 also manifests as back & white or oversimple thinking at times.

Oldham wise it’s hard, something of a pronounced mixed/intereference pattern with both Self-Sacrifcing and Aggressive in the mix.

Wampus.  I see why someone might say Slytherin but I’m sticking with Gryffindor for now.

Pidge

This one is kinda easy.

INTP 5w6. Ravenclaw. Horned Serpent. Lunar. sp/soc. IDK bout vertical subtype but she rambles/blurts more than she snarks/criticises so I’m saying contact. 

Less sure ‘bout oldham though there’s probably some Vigilant, though not, like, sharp excess.

Imma run with melancholic b/c she’s definitely not pure Phlegmatic or Supine. MelPhleg perhaps. 

Shiro

Apparently there has been a case of “the fan-favorite is always INFJ” (TF?) but I think most of us will agree that he has Te - he’s goot at handing out tasks, managing people, coming up with courses of action...

He rocks that tert Fi too in that he’s a good listener & tries to further the other’s personal developement. 

We often think of natural leaders as extroverts but ISTJ is prolly the introvert most likely to become head-of-state. He just fits the overall patterns of ISTJ: Dilligent, put-together (when he can help it), great integrity, perceptive with details & able to use comparision with past experiences to kick butt in the present (Like when he timed the Sentry Drones’ rounds), though he does’t have the elbowy agression/striving of other TJ-types, and he’s a morning person too. 

He’s probably a contact subtype. Temperament wise he’d be one of those few where I’d be tempted to call ‘balanced/Leukine’, but if I didn’t I’d say ChlorPhleg comes the closest.  1w9 af, prolly sp/soc with a degree of both personalperfectionism & mentoring others present, and also feeling overly responsible for everything. 

Oldham wise an obvious conscientious type. 

While he’d sure have some gryffindor potential, his firm belief in teamwork & humility would probaby land him in Hufflepuff.- Think Cedric Diggory who was also a sort of prodigy. Though he is probably also very much a Wampus.

Also, he’s a classic, archetypical pure Saturn type. Actually, I believe at least partially saturnyne personalities are the Black Lion’s thing. Still not sure how Blue’s could be quantified, apart from possibly favoring extroverts, but that’s probably by design. 

Keith

Mai Spicy Boi! . 

I’m just gonna flat out say that he cannot be anything other than a contact subtype Se auxillary. Just look at all that Se! That’s about as much of the stuff as you can possibly cram into an introvert. 

He’s got sharp senses & reflexes, often reacts to opportunities, observations and impressions in the moment (and very often it’s a deliberate risk that works out - he’s not just “hotheaded” or “not thinking”, but he’s thinking about things to do or investigate, not so much what happens next. ) & improvised, didn’t really have longterm plans after flunking out, He also very much has the ‘decisive’ and agressive side of Se though I wouldn’t call him dominant. 

And I’m saying ISTP over ISFP b/c the Se itself seems a sufficient explanation for his reactive nature,and then there’s general lack of people skills, solitary mode of operation & difficulty with group work (not a shred of Te not even inferior) 

Also, when he’s actually thinking rather than just waltzing in guns blazing, he very much has task-oriented, detached impersonal reasoning  “But can we afford to save the princess? It’s not about the glory. The cause is bigger than any of us.” He’s also very much the cynic of the group or the one most inclined to see things in shades of grey rather than black & whites. 

I doublechecked this to make sure I’m not just assuming him to be a Ti dom b/c he’s my fav character, but ‘ISTP’ really seem to summarize his character & much of the metas written about him very well.

Soo... is he a cp 6? a sp4? An 8? Probably all of those, they don’t call that the “tripple reactive” tritype for nothing but coretype wise I’d put him very much in the action triad as a 8w7, that’s not even all that uncommon for ISTPs. He’s also very distinctly soc blind,(which may explain why he doesn’t really manifest the dominant part of the 8, but he’s very much got the every-man-for-himself, rely-on-no-one rebel part of it, as well as the characteristic problem with backing down/shelving arguments though the other fixes, again, don’t help.  ) not sure if sx/sp or sp/sx, on the one hand he’s...tempestuous, on the other he spent a year as a desert hermit and found itpleasantly calm, at least in part, so if pressed I’d go with sp/sx, also because of his tedency to hold himself apart from the group somewhat without much indication that it’s a conscious choice. 

Oldham wise he’s got some adventurous & some vigilant but also some sort of more emotionally juicy counterpoint to that without which he’d have a lot more hostile unconcern. He’s not clingy enough for Mercurial tho so I’m vaguely at a loss. 

He’s got some more maturity to acquire there but I do think there’s very much a Saturn-Mars underneath it all. Certainly NOT as thought-through as a pure saturn and with no shortage on the action but he does have momentzs of somberness and nuanced understanding.  Very much fits both the archetype of the ‘rugged doer’ and the ‘powerful, cause-oriented person’. though he still has some work to do on the ‘inspiring others’ part. 

Gryffindor, no 2 ways about it. (Some have suggested Slytherin because he’s the “edgy” one but honestly I don’t see that at all. He has zero interest in personal glory or the ‘in-group’ & doesn’t seem to think of himself as special though he would very much have the grounds to do so.) 

The real question is: Wampus or Thunderbird tho?

Coran

Clearly has both Ne (wackyness and quirkyness) and Si (storytime! “Proper” Traditionalist), and too much for either to be the inferior. 

Since he doesn’t seem like a Ne auxillary, that leaves us with ESFJ by principle of exclusion, like he kinda has the chattynes & is always helping with everything & taking all the duties. Probably a contact subtype. 

Hufflepuff for similar reasons. IDK bout Ilvermony but he does have an adventurous side that did shenanigans with the previous paladins, so probably Thunderbird. 

Out of the enneagram types that commonly occur in ExSJ, 9 seems the likeliest, he’s nor dramatic enough for a core type in the emotional triad. I’d say he also has a 7w6 fix somewhere. Also he’s probably soc-first... and in hindsight actualy acts alot like a textbook social 9, working a lot to support the community while not taking the spotlight himself. 

Oldham wise I’d postulate a Dramatic-Devoted mix.

Essence type made me think for a bit i had several inconclusive kneejerk reactions but imma stick with Jupiter for now.

Zarkon

Well, another ESTJ, prolly an inert subtype tho. 

Pretty much your standard evil overlord/ Te dom villain, though he’s more an enforcer than someone who does a lot of lecturing like when he does it’s usually to-the-point, plus he was sorta repressed in his youth & seemingly a strict traditionalist. 

Also a very obvious Aggressive type (complete with the comon constellation where the spouse can deal with & accept that that but the kid’s can’t & regular teenage rebellion ends in dramatic estrangement), like, he would not be questioned even by his best friend even long before he went nuts enough to randomly murder ppl for talking back to him.

You could deem him an  8w9 and a Saturn for similar reasons though he evidently incorporates the more negative aspects of that... though he did have a “protective-responsible” side before things got too sour.

Ovsly Slytherin (& wampus), methinks the whole imperial family would be one those dynastic Slytherin families for all their differences. 

Haggar

I found her hard to get a read on for the first two seasons, but with the backstory reveal I think I can conclude INTx, see the whole lightning speech & the whole “Think of the Potential!” attitude, also her being a misanthropic cat lady & sassing Alfor to his face (”customary gesture”) way before things went all sour.

I am less sure here, but out of the two options INTP is more likely because I think I see more indications for SiFe than for FiSe. Her present day self is markedly more cautious than she was in her younger days. She minimally toys with her victims for effect (Poor Shiro) and has this pretty honest devotion & concern for Zarkon, though she seems content subordinating herself to him, though she has this dourish Si-Ti bubble-popping, “Yeah sure but be cautious” attitude especially in interaction with Lotor & Zarkon.  

Beyond that, i’d say that she is a very clearly an inert subtype, a Serious-primary and probably some fashion of 5w6 (by principle of exclusion). Slytherin & Horned Serpent. What else would a mad science shadow empress space witch possbly be? Might be Lunar but don’t really have a good read there

Lotor

Some kind of NF, ENFJ if I had to guess. Not his father indeed, though still quite ExxJ. He has the charme, he has a planning, analytic quality underneath, but while he had ambition the more fundamental motivation seems to be to enarn recognition to prove himself.

sx/soc 7, glorious, extra with lots of plumage, certainly very self-interested when it comes down but you could totally picture him just chilling with his henchladies & preferring a ‘personal’ environment/inner circle though he can totally work crowds like clay. 

Self-Confident with a tinge of Exuberant perhaps. 

Slytherin Thunderbird. 

Perhaps what an antagonistic Solar Type looks like. He’s got charme, he’s got loftiness and big goals he works hard to accomplish and little hesitation to put his own person out on the field  but he’s sorta the very opposite of naive, very much a planner and going all road runner on poor Keith. Come to think of it,one could make a good case for him as a Solar-Saturn. 

As for the Generals/henchladies we’ve only seen bits & pieces of them so far all we can really tell is that Narti and Acxa are introverts while Zethrid and Ezor are extroverts, but Imma risk a guess based on rough vibes/ intuition:

Ezor: ESFP Narti: ISTP Acxa: ISTJ Zethrid: ESTJ

[spanishskulduggery]

not really a question about a specific sentence/situation but after finally getting comfortable with spanish pronouns i discovered that there are certain indicators for passive voice and one of them is se. in what contexts would you use this passive voice in spanish and could you explain more about the construction?? your blog is very helpful btw!!

This is one of the weird parts of Spanish - se has many functions and so it can be really confusing to see them all in different ways

I'm going to have a LOT to say below, so bear with me it's a long read and I'll try to explain everything, just know that a lot of it is very advanced in places

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I'm assuming that you've seen se used in reflexives/pronomial verbs [like lavar "to wash" vs. lavarse "to wash oneself"]...

...And that you've probably seen se used to replace le/les when you're doing indirect objects + direct objects... lo escribo "I write it", le escribo "I write to him/her", then se lo escribo "I'm writing it to him/her"

...

Grammatically just know that se has MANY functions and they're all generally 3rd-person-related, and carries a more impersonal function

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As for se in passive voice, first let me explain passive voice - I'm sure you have an idea of what it is but I'm going to briefly explain it like you're 5 so I'm sorry about that

Passive voice places emphasis on the object rather than the subject

Active voice = Subject verbs an object

Passive voice = An object is verbed (by Subject)

When you're first introduced to passive voice it's often done with ser in past tense + past participles + por (alguien)

El libro fue escrito en el siglo XVI (dieciséis). = The book was written in the 16th century. El libro fue escrito por Cervantes. = The book was written by Cervantes.

escrito/a "written" being the past participle of escribir "to write"... and an irregular one at that; a past participle is really just the adjectival form of a verb

Most participles end in -ado or -ido; as adjectives they can change, but as past participles they're unchanging

[in other words: ha escrito "he/she has written", and then fue escrito/a "was written"]

Other more common examples:

Las galletas fueron horneadas por la pastelera. = The cookies were baked by the pastry chef (f). El hombre fue empleado por la compañía. = The man was employed by the company. La mujer fue empleada por la compañía. = The woman was employed by the company. Fuimos contratados. = We were hired. [m+m, m+f] Fuimos contratadas. = We were hired. [f+f]

Because passive voice focuses on the object, the verb will conjugate according to them... that's why las galletas fueron horneadas

If you wanted to phrase it in active voice: la pastelera horneó las galletas "the pastry chef (f) baked the cookies"

The por alguien part is not necessarily needed such as in fuimos contratados / contratadas.

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As for passive voice with se, there's one more thing I need to point out

There's another almost identical construction that uses se and that is "impersonal se"

The more impersonal Spanish gets, the more se gets used... this is "one does" or "someone does"; an undefined person, often "one", or a "you" or "they" in English

¿Cómo se hace un pavo asado? = How do you make/cook a roast turkey?

Like I said though, they look almost exactly the same so your translation might change depending on what you mean; but in Spanish they're very slight differences:

Se habla español. = They speak Spanish. [impersonal] Se habla español. = Spanish is spoken. [passive]

If you're reading about what languages a country speaks, these are pretty much the same idea so it's easily interchangeable.

¿Cómo se pronuncia llamar en Argentina? = How do they pronounce llamar in Argentina? ¿Cómo se pronuncia llamar en Argentina? = How is llamar pronounced in Argentina?

The only real difference is that impersonal is ALWAYS singular [because the subject as a "they" is considered singular ambiguous "they"]

And passive voice with se can be singular OR plural because it adheres to the object... which could be plural:

Se hizo un pastel. = They made a cake. [impersonal] Se hizo un pastel. = A cake was made. [passive] Se hizo pasteles. = They made cakes. [impersonal] Se hicieron pasteles. = Cakes were made. [passive]

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Now we get into the more advanced stuff, and I mean this is C2 level the most advanced and least explained parts of se, that native speakers will use and your textbooks rarely talk about

This whole thing is classified as "superfluous dative" which is a linguistic subset - essentially times you use se when it doesn't seem to fill a grammatical function

[note: "dative" means "indirect objects", or "to whom or for whom something is done" - it places more emphasis on who is receiving the benefits/inconveniences of something that is done]

Predominantly it's used in dativo ético or "ethical dative", which again just means it places more emphasis on the person receiving the benefits/inconveniences which will make sense later. But for linguistic purposes in things I barely understand, just know that superfluous dative has multiple terms under it for specific functions/things but dativo ético is probably the most common one under that umbrella

...

The passive se is especially used in expressions of things that "were done", or things that "happened" to people. This is most commonly used for things that were unexpected, inconvenient, or for trying to place the blame on someone else

You'll probably notice this in verbs that are "reflexive" but don't have the same reflexive meaning you normally associate with the idea... Meaning that lavar "to wash" and lavarse "to wash oneself" makes sense, but then you'll have something like dormir "to sleep" vs. dormirse "to fall asleep"

...And dormirse doesn't come out as "to sleep oneself" so it is a bit weird as a reflexive... that's dativo ético

This is most commonly introduced with olvidar vs. olvidarse

olvidar = to forget [which feels purposeful in some cases] olvidarse (de) = to forget [which is more common]

But you'll have seen it with other verbs like ir/irse "to leave/to go away", mudar/mudarse "to change / to move (residences)" or romper/romperse "to break/break down" and also morir/morirse which morir is "to die", but people will sometimes use moririse as "to pass away suddenly".

The -se endings seem to give the verb a whole separate meaning or more nuance

It can be used as a with additional indirect objects to show specifically who was benefitted/inconvenienced:

Se acabó. = It's over. / It ended. Se me acaba el tiempo. = Time is running out for me. Rompí el coche/carro/auto. = I broke the car. [purposeful] Se rompió el coche/carro/auto. = The car broke down. [on its own] Se me rompió el coche/carro/auto. = The car up and died on me. Se me durmió la pierna. = My leg fell asleep (on me). Se me durmieron las nalgas. = My butt fell asleep (on me). Mis estudiantes se me dormían. = My students were falling asleep on me. [as in "my students were falling asleep during (my) class"] Se me cayó el diente. = My tooth fell out. Se me olvidó el libro. = The book totally slipped my mind. Se me olvidaron las llaves. = I forgot my keys. / My keys completely slipped my mind.

*Note: In these cases you'll be using indirect objects... so se + me/te/le/les/nos/os + verb

You'll occasionally see this written in infinitive form with the le attached... like olvidar "to forget", olvidarse "to forget" (more passive), then olvidársele "to slip one's mind" meaning extra passive dativo ético

...

And so you'll find that with passive and expressions like this objects will "become forgotten (themselves)" to someone, a bus will "leave itself to someone", etc

These expressions carry an inherent lack of control and occasionally lack of guilt or responsibility... like saying se rompió el espejo reads like "the mirror broke all on its own" and implies you had nothing to do with it, while se me rompió el espejo implies that it also negatively affects you but that you had nothing to do with it

[spanishskulduggery]

Hiii!! I've just discovered your blog and I want to say that as a native spanish speaker (from Madrid) I find your posts really interesting.

Also, I wanted to add something about the "se" in passive sentences. I didn't see you mentioning the name of passives with se but it might be helpful for some people. To remember how it's used and what for.

The type of sentences that are passive and use the se like se venden pisos (flats are being sold) are called pasivas reflejas (reflexive passives, more or less) because the passive verb is accompanied by se, called marca de pasiva refleja, which as you mentioned in othe cases serves to emphasize actions on certain objects. That's why it's called refleja. To compare:

Reflexive passive: Se venden (los) pisos.

Normal passive: (Los) pisos son vendidos.

Having said that, I'm going to ramble a bit. I've always been curious about how much grammar is studied in other countries because, as far as I know, spanish is the only language that places so much importance on learning the grammar rules. From the age of 10 we have to learn sintax, morphology and grammar analysis, and it's a big part of one the exams we have to take in Selectividad. Everyone knows the list of prepositions and different types of passives, impersonal forms, types of se... idk I just want to know if it's only here or in other countries too.

And I just want to congratulate you on having such an interesting blog as this one. I hope you're having a good day and that I didn't bore you with this ask.

First of all, thank you!

Second: Ahh that makes sense. I've come to learn how to use them but I was never taught the actual words for some of the linguistic concepts (which is how I stumbled upon dativo ético when looking for what things were actually called)

I can't speak for everyone, but I will say that when I first took Spanish in elementary school it was more unstructured - we learned words, verbs, some conjugations, but it wasn't as comprehensive as I would have liked. We focused a lot on conjugation more than anything

In high school, it was much more structured (we go from Spanish 1 to Spanish 4 in the US; in my school you needed to take 2 years of a foreign language but I wanted to learn Spanish so I took all the classes)

There it was the regular verbs, irregular verbs, stem-changing verbs, word order, preterite, imperfect, a bit of the subjunctive, future, conditional, commands, etc.

I didn't really learn subjunctive completely until university, but I was also not getting the best grades in Spanish because I had to unlearn things that were wrong or put things into context... like knowing the prepositions, but not knowing that some verbs take different prepositions [there was a lot of esperar para for "wait for", things like that that are very wrong, or not knowing sino and pero]

College was different in that I was also taking language classes with composition and literature, so I was seeing more of the language

But we weren't taught a lot of the linguistics. We really made it as far as imperfect subjunctive, and Spanish 4 was a lot of talk about the subjunctive

Finally understanding preterite/imperfect, things like imperfect subjunctive vs future subjunctive, passive voice [we learned the normal passive but didn't really touch on reflexive passive], and other things native speakers do with pronomials didn't come until much later and during this blog

I feel like a lot of the education I had was based on grammar and fundamentals, but not as in depth in grammar as you would get as a native speaker. I did take classes in translation to get better used to how Spanish worked grammatically compared to English, and I was doing lots of literature classes with literary analysis in Spanish so I got a lot of reading/writing practice. But there was less emphasis on linguistics which... I feel like even a bit of linguistics would have helped

This is also an aside but I was taking other languages too and when I took German briefly it was then that I really understood the concepts of accusative/direct objects and dative/indirect objects... I felt like I was learning more from comparison than what was covered in classes. My textbooks were also very formally written and some quite old... as in still using éste and considering CH its own letter; and I specifically remember guion being guión in my vocabulary lists

I think I had a lot of training with fundamentals, but not as much with advanced grammar and there was very little discussion of linguistics or morphology... and syntax we talked about things like how sentences work with questions or commands, but less so about how subject placement can change things. I was also taught things but they were not explained thoroughly sometimes, like why se is used in irse or why it's se busca or what the difference between the -iera/-ara and -iese/-ase forms were [just that they were there and considered interchangeable in my more Latin American textbook]

I think I learned more about irregular conjugations and exceptions to rules than most native speakers (like I was learning asir which I've never seen a single person use in my life)

[spanishskulduggery]

crystalwarriorprincess replied:

Can you explain the use of se being optional here?

This is in reference to how I used (se) murió but wrote the se in parentheses

It's a difficult grammatical concept to explain; essentially what it boils down to is the mood. While morir is "to die", morirse "to die" takes on the meaning of "to pass away" and often evokes the idea of suddenness, so you will see "murió" and "se murió" and neither are wrong, it's just the vibe. Other verbs can take on little nuances with a reflexive [though they aren't truly reflexive]... as in dormir "to sleep" vs. dormirse "to fall asleep"

Another example is ir "to go" and irse "to go away", where the irse seems to imply more distance. This grammatical concept I believe is called "dativo ético" or ethical dative which is the use of reflexive pronouns to imply some kind of deeper meaning than the normal verb expresses; in English we tend to use prepositions to express that, like caer "to fall" vs caerse "to fall down/off" or "to sink down"

You will also see the se used in other contexts for passive or impersonal expressions like se habla español "Spanish is spoken" [passive] or alternatively translated as "they speak Spanish" [impersonal; no true subject] For that reason you may see these referred to as pronomials; which just means they use reflexives, but typically se for 3rd person. A true reflexive is somewhat different. I'll explain in a bigger post hold on

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There are multiple grammatical concepts involved in this, so bear with me I’ll try and keep it simple and easy to understand

...

All things that use reflexive pronouns [me, te, se, nos, os] - but primarily se - are listed as “pronomials”. All that means is they use reflexive pronouns, even if it’s not “reflexive” by the technical and grammatical definition

These include true reflexives, passive and impersonal se constructions, and the superfluous dative constructions

...

First, reflexives. A reflexive verb is where the subject and object are the same. This is what I’m referring to as a “true reflexive”

Many verbs can be regular if done to someone else, but will become reflexive if done to oneself; the most common example is lavar “to wash” - lavar el piso “to wash the floor” or lavar al perro “to wash the dog”. But if you wash yourself or your own body parts, it’s lavarse such as lavarse las manos “to wash one’s hands”, or lavarse el cabello “to wash one’s hair”

True reflexives may also be what’s called reciprocal reflexives - where two or more subjects do something to one another... such as conocerse “to meet one another”; another one is abrazar - one can abrazar a alguien “hug someone”, but if it’s returned it’s abrazarse “to embrace/hug (one another)”

...

The other common ones are passive and impersonal se constructions

Passive voice is often done either with se or it’s using the adjectival form of verbs [as an example: fue escrito por el autor “it was written by the author” vs. se escribió “it was written”]

Impersonal expressions are ones where there is no explicit subject said; in these cases it’s often translated as an ambiguous “they” or “one”... like se dice “they say”

They mostly look the same as stated above with se habla español

The difference is in plural, where passive can be expressed in plural [since passive voice refers to objects, not subjects] but the impersonal is always singular:

¿Cómo se hace galletas? = How do you make cookies? / How does one make cookies? [impersonal]

¿Cómo se hacen galletas? = How are cookies made? / How do cookies get made? [passive]

...

The dativo ético as part of superfluous dative is another topic and it’s fairly advanced. I’ll link my info on it, but it requires knowledge of the use of se and sometimes indirect objects, so it’s not always great for people just starting out or for people still shaky on their Spanish

Especially because a lot of the time you see it it’s either present tense or preterite, and if you don’t know preterite it can really confuse you

An ask about se me cayó “I dropped it” / “it slipped out of my hand”

using comerse with food to sound like a native speaker

reflexives vs dativo ético with olvidar

The dativo ético tag

[spanishskulduggery]

So, definitely a noob question but: What is the difference in using “Me llamo …” vs “Mi nombre …”?

I assume it has something to do with the content of the sentence?

No, that's a very common question. I'll try to be as clear as I can, but what makes it difficult is that it involves grammar that's intermediate

Basically it's a style choice

Teachers don't often go into everything all at once so they don't overwhelm you. I'll include what I think is helpful, but just know it's a lot and all of the concepts I'm going to talk about are things you learn over time so don't worry if nothing makes sense right now

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me llamo is derived from a reflexive verb, llamarse which is "to call oneself" literally. As far as introductions it gets translated as "my name is" or "I am"... but literally "I call myself"

mi nombre es is literally "my name is"

You're being taught both because llamarse for introductions is VERY common, but can be confusing grammar and mi nombre es is easier to understand at the beginner level

Another example is you're probably going to be taught that recordar is "to remember"... it's more literally "to recall". The actual verb for "to remember" is acordarse and they don't usually tell you that because it's reflexive and could be confusing.

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Some of this might be over your head if you're a beginner, but here's an intro to reflexive verbs

Reflexive verbs are ones where the subject and object are the same

In basic grammar, the subject does something, and the object receives the action. So, something like "I eat the apple"; the "I" is the subject, and "the apple" is the object.

Subject verbs an object, in other words

With reflexive verbs, the subject and the object are the same. It's something that someone/something does to themselves/itself

As an example: ponerse la ropa is "to put on clothes", literally "to put clothes on oneself"

There's way more to reflexive verbs though that I can't totally get into without being confusing. But there are two basic things to know as a beginner for reflexives:

Reflexive verbs in their infinitive form [the dictionary form, or unconjugated form] end in -se. Thus llamar "to call" is considered a bit different from llamarse "to call oneself" / "to be named"

Not every use of se is reflexive in the way I explained above. There are times when you will see it used in a way that is... weird, for lack of a better word. They get talked about later, but they can be used for passive voice, impersonal things, or some other things that are hard to explain but feel natural for native speakers

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Generally, the use of reflexives isn't super common when you're starting out. They're talked about more when you get into daily routines.

People try to avoid it for beginners because it's a more particular set of grammar and when you're starting out it can be a lot

But when you use reflexives, you'll see me, te, se, or nos depending on the subject.

me is used for yo, te for tú, se for 3rd person singular AND plural, and nos for nosotros

So it comes out as me llamo, te llamas, se llama for singular, se llaman for plural, and nos llamamos for nosotros

But as far as mi nombre es / soy / me llamo for introducing yourself, it's a matter of preference

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Some bits of possibly somewhat more advanced grammar is that me llamo "I call myself" is different from something like me llaman "they call me"

This particular expression - me llaman - is a direct object phrase. Remember "I eat the apple"? Same construction; "me" is just the direct object here.

You'll learn more about direct objects later, but they receive an action and are acted upon... "directly".

You'll also see the idea of "indirect objects" when you talk about gustar but the idea there is that indirect objects receive the action or result of an action, but they don't receive it directly. This is "to whom / for whom" something is done

Direct objects, indirect objects, and reflexives are the three things that use special particles called "object pronouns"... for reflexive it's me, te, se, nos... and a special one, os if you're in Spain and using vosotros

.......

me llaman is "they call me" and would be like someone has given "me" a nickname

This is a different grammar construction from reflexive; but the difference is me llamo is "my name is" in the sense of "this is how I refer to myself" and me llaman for plural/impersonal is like "this is what they've decided to call me"

[spanishskulduggery]

I'm still confused about Se vs Le.

What's the difference between

Aquí la luz le favorece vs aquí la luz se favorece?

Thanks in advance! :)

When they’re by themselves it’s very distinct.

le is an indirect object “to him/her/them/it”, and se is normally reflexive, passive, or impersonal

To put it a different way your sentence could be translated somewhat differently depending on your context but they are distinct:

La luz le favorece (a él) = The light favors him La luz le favorece (a ella) = The light favors her La luz le favorece (a ello/esto/eso) = The light favors it La luz le favorece (a alguien) = The light favors them (singular)

La luz se favorece (a sí misma) = The light favors itself [reflexive] La luz se favorece = The light is favored [passive] La luz se favorece = They favor the light [impersonal, though this is not the ideal construction for impersonal]

In general, le can only really be one thing. It might depend on who you’re talking about but it’s always “to whom” or “for whom” in a way.

The se is the weird one because while it typically is used for reflexives, se appears widely and works in different grammatical functions

You may also see them together, se le favorece would mean something like “someone got favored”; it’s a mix of a passive expression + indirect object to show that someone received an action

That se me / se te / se le(s) / se nos expression is a very common one for something that’s passive and shows no clear subject. Just a quick example:

Se acabó el tiempo. = The time ran out. / Time was up. Se le acabó el tiempo. = They ran out of time. / Time was up for them.

More literally it’s something like “time (became) ended to them”. So it’s that passive-ish expression + an indirect object to show who was impacted by what happened.

[spanishskulduggery]

can you dumb down/create a guide for passive/active voices in spanish? is it something that needs to be learned at a a2/b1 level or???

It’s definitely something you learn later on. I think I learned it in Spanish 3 or 4, so that’s like B1 or B2. 

But basically…

Subject verbs an object. = Active voice

Object is verbed by Subject. = Passive voice

There are two ways you do passive voice.

Using ser + past participle + por*

Using se + 3rd person singular or plural

*The por isn’t totally necessary but if you want to say “by who” that’s what you use.

They’re both fairly common, though the use of se is more idiomatic in places. Unfortunately, because se is used for so many things - not counting passive voice - and because it shows up first when people learn reflexive verbs, it can be daunting to try and figure out why a verb is being used with the se

Because passive reads differently than reflexive verbs. Not to muddy the issue too much but true reflexives are where the subject and object are the same like “I wash myself” or “I brush my (own) hair” etc

This may be slightly above your current level, but I’ll do a very bare bones explanation.

Past participles first show up with haber “to have (done)”. They’re adjectival forms of verbs. Basically think “to see” vs “seen”, or “to do” vs “done”. Some past participles are irregular, so it can be a little confusing if you’re not there yet

El libro fue escrito por Cervantes. = The book was written by Cervantes.La obra fue escrita por Cervantes. = The work was written by Cervantes.

Technically it doesn’t need the por you could just say fue escrito/a “it was written”

Using the se expression for passive, more puts the emphasis on the object.

Se escribe con una H. = It’s spelled with an H.

Se escriben con una H. = They’re spelled with an H.

Literally this is more like “they get spelled with an H”. It puts all of the agency on the object, while taking all responsibility away from whoever’s doing the action.

In this case, we’re not even focusing on who it is that’s writing, it’s just what’s being written. Or in this case what “gets itself written”.

Se comió el pastel. = The cake got eaten. / The cake was eaten.

Se comieron las galletas. = The cookies got eaten. / The cookies were eaten.

This is a more concrete example.

In active voice, the people “eating” would be the subjects. In this case, you don’t know who that is.

So all of the agency gets put on the objects; the things being eaten.

Passive se is singular for singular objects; el pastel, but plural for plural objects las galletas

It works like this in English too. If it were present tense “the cake gets eaten” and then “the cookies get eaten”... conjugating clearly that all the focus is on the object.

This kind of passive is sometimes confused with impersonal se because it doesn’t often show up with a person actually doing it. Things “are done” but it’s not always clear by who. 

Explaining impersonal would be kind of confusing, but it’s like when you say “they” but there’s no one there.

Se habla español. = They speak Spanish. [impersonal]Se habla español y francés. = They speak Spanish and French. [impersonal]

Se habla español. = Spanish is spoken. [passive]Se hablan español y francés. = Spanish and French are spoken. [passive]

You can’t even see the difference unless it’s in plural.

But on my classroom door for Spanish there was a sign: Se habla español aquí which was “Spanish is spoken here”, or in context could be understood impersonally as “They speak Spanish here”.

[spanishskulduggery]

I think I understand reflexive verbs but I recently learned about Definite and Indefinite pronouns. I understand their use but all these pronouns seem so similar and it confuses me.

[I assume you mean direct and indirect object pronouns. Definite and indefinite makes me personally think of articles but it might just be what they are in my head vs what you learned them as]

Most of them actually are. It’s only 3rd person you really  need to worry about.

Direct object pronouns:

me

te

lo/la

los/las

nos

os

Indirect object pronouns:

me

te

le

les

nos

os

Reflexive object pronouns:

me

te

se

nos

os

So the me, te, nos, and in Spain os are always all the same. They are technically different object pronouns in that they’re used in different situations, but they’re the same pronouns so you don’t have to think too much about it.

3rd person [including usted and ustedes] is the difficult one because that’s the one that changes.

Direct objects are people or things that receive the result of an action.

Indirect objects are people or things are to whom or for whom something is done.

And in true reflexives it’s when the subject and the object are the same; someone does something to themselves. And as reciprocal reflexive it’s two or more people do something to each other.

A good way to think about the difference between direct and indirect is something like “I’m telling him the truth” or le digo la verdad

The direct object here is la verdad because Subject verbs an object; “I tell the truth”, and la verdad is the recipient of the verb decir

The indirect object is normally a person, living creature, or a personified object. This isn’t always the case, but it’s generally the case. In this case it’s le which marks it as “to him” (or possibly “to her” since le could be either). With indirect objects it’s normally “to/for” someone. So while English phrases it as “tell him”, it’s more literally “tell (something) to him” because you can’t exactly “speak/talk” someone.

Because 3rd person can be so vague as far as who the recipient is, if it’s not clear you can add a in there. You can do that with other objects but it reads as more emphatic. Like me dices “you tell me” is obvious that it’s “to me” already, but me dices a mí “you say to ME” is emphatic

But for 3rd person when it’s ambiguous:

Le digo la verdad (a él). = I’m telling him the truth.Le digo la verdad (a ella). = I’m telling her the truth.Le digo la verdad (a usted). = I’m telling you the truth.

Les digo la verdad (a ellos). = I’m telling them (m+m, or m+f) the truth.Les digo la verdad (a ellas). = I’m telling them (f+f) the truth.Les digo la verdad (a ustedes). = I’m telling you (all) the truth.

Reflexives are usually more clear cut when they’re mentioned. The subject and the object are the same.

If we use decir you can have decirse which is “to talk to oneself”

The example I commonly use with reflexives is lavar vs. lavarse

You can wash a wall, you can wash a dog, you can wash clothes etc. All of those are direct objects that receive the result of “to wash”

But if you wash yourself, or some part of your body, that’s reflexive because YOU are the object now, and it’s me lavo “I wash myself” which can come out as me lavo las manos “I wash my hands” [las manos here could only be your own hands with me, so you don’t use mis manos “my hands”; Spanish does this a lot with body parts], me lavo el brazo “I wash my arm”, me lavo la cara “I wash my face”, me lavo los pies “I wash my feet” etc.

What will trip you up is when indirect objects and direct objects meet. It’s usually fine except when it’s 3rd person + 3rd person.

So assume that la here is for la verdad

Me la dicen. = They tell me it.

Te la dicen. = They tell you (it).

Nos la dicen. = They tell us (it).

And then for third person it’s...

Se la dicen. = They tell him/her/you/them/you all (it).

Basically whenever le or les shows up + lo/la/los/las, the le or les turns into a se

This has nothing to do with reflexives. The se here is ONLY because saying le lo or les lo or something would sound silly or trip you up. The se is only here to take the places of le/les in this particular case, and serves no other grammatical function.

And just so you’re aware, se gets used in some other grammatical ways that have nothing to do with reflexive. I say that because it will show up and it will be weird and confusing, but it’s usually se being used in a passive or impersonal expression; like se dice “one says” or “they say”

That’s the very basic explanation of object pronouns. For more specifically on direct and indirect objects:

Anatomy of Spanish: Direct Objects

Anatomy of Spanish: Indirect Objects

[spanishskulduggery]

Se vs le when being polite. What's the difference between Haberse and Haberle? Or poderse or poderle?

In general, people are going to use se more often in everyday speech because it’s impersonal and goes with everything.

The use of the indirect objects for being polite is academically more favorable, which means it’s a little more fancy.

Like if you were saying “they bring food to the customers” the most common translation would be like se trae comida a los clientes “food is brought to the customers” but more formal and correct is les trae comida a los clientes “he/she brings food to the customers”

I don’t know if haberse / haberle and poderse / poderle are really the best examples. Usually they make sense in context, but they’re a little funny by themselves because they don’t really show up that often without something else in the sentence.

Like... tras haberse desmayado would be “after having fainted” which uses haber in infinitive, but the se comes from desmayarse “to faint”

Or tras haberle hecho daño “after having done him/her harm”, where the le is used because it applies to hacer daño “to cause/do harm”

Or even antes de haberles dicho “before having told them” if you use les 

In both cases, the object is being attached to haber because it’s the unconjugated one.

Similarly something like debe poderse ver “it should be seen” is a passive expression with se though that se makes more sense with deber. I think debe poder verse would mean “one must be able to see oneself” or something like that, verse is a little idiomatic in some cases.

Or para poderle ayudar “to be able to help him/her/You”

The thing that’s weird is that poder and haber are usually used as modal or helping verbs, they don’t often appear on their own. 

haberse + past participle usually gets used when you’re using a perfect tense + reflexive verb, like haberse enamorado “to have fallen in love”, haberse dormido “to have fallen asleep”, haberse ido “to have gone away” etc.

poder is very often a modal for “can/to be able to”, but when you see poderse or more commonly se puede it comes across as passive or impersonal “it can be done”

I would also say that in general seeing haberle or poderle is a little more unusual, but not unheard of in proper context.

I would say se puede ayudar "they can be helped” and le puede ayudar “he/she can help him/her/You” are both grammatically valid, although the use of le is more personal

But like I said, in general the se is more common in everyday Spanish and it isn’t read as impolite, it’s just more common.

The le/les is considered very correct, which makes it more formal and polite.

Also if I got anything wrong, native speakers, please let me know. It’s possible I missed something or someone was asking for something different than what I thought.

[spanishskulduggery]

hello! i was confused about reflexive verbs. why are some reflexive and some aren't? can all verbs be made reflexive? do some verbs change meaning when used as a reflexive verb vs the normal verb? sorry if you've already answered this, and thank you!

Not all verbs can be made reflexive, though it depends on the verb itself.

What reflexive really means is that the subject and the object are the same; someone does something to/for themselves.

So you have a verb like decir which is “to say”, but then decirse is “to talk to oneself” which would also work for hablar and hablarse 

For some verbs it depends on the object as to whether or not they can be reflexive:

pintar = to paintpintar a alguien = to paint someonepintarse = to apply makeup (to oneself)

bañar = to bathebañar a alguien = to give someone a bathbañarse = to take a bath (oneself)

poner = to putponerse (la ropa) = to put on (clothes)ponerse + adjetivo = to get + adjective [se pone nervioso/a “he/she gets nervous”]

quitar = to removequitarse (la ropa) = to take off (clothes)

There are also some verbs that are reciprocal reflexives, where it’s two or more subjects that do something to each other. For example conocer is normally “to know” or “to meet” but conocerse (when it doesn’t mean “to know oneself”) only exists as plural… se conocen “they know each other”

abrazar = to hugabrazar a alguien = to hug someonese abrazan = they’re hugging each other

This also works for besar “to kiss” or other verbs.

There are some verbs where context is crucial because there’s casarse “to get married” which could be singular se casa con alguien “he/she is getting married to someone” or it could be plural se casan which could be “(two people) are getting married” OR “they’re getting married (to each other)” and it depends on the actual context.

A little more confusing are verbs that have to do with body parts where they are reflexive but because your body parts belong to you:

lavar = to washlavarse = to wash oneselfse lava las manos = he/she is washing his/her hands

Literally it’s “they wash themselves the hands” but it’s reflexive because the “hands” could only belong to the same subject if it’s reflexive. Someone can wash someone else’s hands, but that would not be a reflexive anymore it’d be lava sus manos “he/she is washing their hands”

That also sometimes happens with caer “to fall” where caerse el pelo is “for someone’s hair to fall out” or caerse el diente “for someone’s tooth to fall out”.

Then you get into weird verbs where there’s a complicated concept known as dativo ético that makes the verb reflexive. They make the verb more dramatic or have a more profound impact to the person it’s talking about:

morir = to diemorirse = to die [more dramatic, usually implied to be sudden]

dormir = to sleepdormirse = to fall asleep

ir = to goirse = to go away

There’s also ver which is “to look/see” but then verse is “to look (appearance)” as in te ves bien “you look good”

The one that trips up a lot of people is comer “to eat” vs. comerse “to eat”.

Regular comer is used, but you’re more likely to see comerse used by native speakers like me como la naranja “I’m eating the orange”. Using it as a reflexive has a more emotional weight to the person eating.

In other words comer is “to feed on (for nutritional purposes)” while comerse is more “to eat (because you like what you’re eating)”. It’s a weird concept to explain but it’s implied that comerse has more to do with a sense of enjoyment while comer can have a more mechanical “there’s nothing else I need calories” kind of eating.

What then gets a little more confusing is when the impersonal and passive se are used, so it loses a reflexive quality and it’s more about what can or cannot be done.

estacionar = to parkno estacionarse = no parking

This is impersonal in that it’s not an actual subject, it’s like an impersonal “you” or “one”.

So se puede is a phrase they use a lot in politics and it means “yes we can” or more literally “yes it can be done” or “yes one can do it”

Passive and impersonal really only tend to show up in 3rd person, and passive can exist in singular and plural while impersonal is only singular.

Se habla español aquí. = They speak Spanish here. [impersonal]Se habla español aquí. = Spanish is spoken here. [passive]

It only then becomes an issue in plural vs. singular…

Se habla español y francés. = They speak Spanish and French. [impersonal]

Se hablan español y francés. = Spanish and French are spoken. [passive]

Impersonal is just the lack of a subject, so it puts a “you” or “one” or “they” or ‘we” not as a literal subject but as a stand-in for a subject. 

Impersonal is common as se dice “one says”, se escribe “one spells” as in… ¿cómo se escribe este nombre? “How do you spell this name?”

Passive shows up a lot with inanimate objects or how things happen to other things:

No se pueden abrir las ventanas. = The windows cannot be opened.

This would be different from no pueden abrir las ventanas “they can’t open the windows”… saying no se pueden means that it’s the fault of the windows themselves, not just that the people don’t have the ability to open them.

Passive voice places emphasis on the object, taking agency [the ability to act] away from the subject:

Comieron las galletas. = They ate the cookies. [active voice]

Se comieron las galletas. = The cookies got eaten. [passive voice]

With se comieron las galletas it doesn’t say who did it, just that it happened to the galletas.

They use the se but it’s not really reflexive.

Then you have extreme passive voice which is when something happens on its own to you:

Rompí el coche. = I broke the car. Se rompió el coche. = The car broke (by itself).Se me rompió el coche. = The car up and died on me. / The car broke down on me.

Acabé con hacerlo. = I just finished doing it.Se acabó el tiempo. = Time ran out.Se me acabó el tiempo. = Time got away from me. / Time ran out on me.

You run into that a lot with olvidar where it’s more common to say se me olvidaron las llaves which is “I completely forgot my keys” or “my keys slipped my mind”

More literally it’s “the keys made themselves forgotten to me”

These types of passive expressions are used to mitigate your control over the thing that happened, or when something inadvertent or unexpected happened. We do it too in English though usually with certain verbs or expressions like “I forgot” vs. “it slipped my mind”; in “it slipped my mind” it’s passive voice saying that it’s the fault of the object that slipped “my” mind… or in other words you didn’t willfully forget it. So you see this a lot with accidents or just things you do without thinking, or to say it’s not your fault.

But these aren’t true reflexives… they just look like reflexives because they use the se.

True reflexives have it where object and subject are the same. It’s just that “reflexives” aren’t as clearly differentiated from the other functions that use a se

[spanishskulduggery]

hey i was wondering if you could explain how reflexive verbs work with an indirect object? like the website i was reading used the example "se me rompió la taza" and i just dont understand why the "me" is there and when i should use something like that. i love your blog by the way!!

The indirect object here [me, te, le, les, nos, os] here is not a typical indirect object.

This is an incredibly passive construction used to show who the passivity affects; it’s not completely reflexive in the normal standard definition.

First let’s start with romper vs. romperse

romper = to break

romperse = to break down

Typically the romperse is used for inanimate objects and this is to indicate a kind of passive thing that’s happening.

It’s not rompí la taza “I broke the teacup”; this is active voice.

It’s se rompió la taza “the teacup broke”; and this is more like passive voice.

This is trying to say “the teacup broke (on its own)” removing blame from any one person.

This is very common with all kinds of machinery:

Rompí el coche/carro/auto. = I broke the car.

Se rompió el coche/carro/auto. = The car broke down.

By not typically reflexive in the standard definition, I mean that inanimate objects don’t technically “break themselves” as romperse suggests... it indicates that it happened on its own.

I’ve seen it referred to as la impersonalidad pasiva meaning “no-person passive”, sometimes seen as se impersonal “impersonal se”

Things “break down” on their own, or “get broken” on their own, or things “are taken away” and it’s not really anyone’s fault exactly, it’s more of an impersonal consequence.

By adding the indirect object, you show a kind of... dative weight to it. Meaning it shows who benefits or is inconvenienced by the thing:

Rompí el coche/carro/auto. = I broke the car. [active]

Se rompió el coche/carro/auto. = The car broke down. [passive]

Se me rompió el coche/carro/auto. = The car broke down on me.

We tend to use the “on me” or something like that when this comes up in English, but it’s saying “the car broke down all on its own - I didn’t do it - but it’s inconveniencing me now”... or “the car broke down me”

Another common one is se me acaba ___ which is “(something) is running out on me/for me”... so se me acaba el tiempo is “time is running out for me” or se me acaba la harina “I ran out of flour”

This se me ___ construction [which can be used with any of the indirect objects] shows a “I didn’t expect it”, usually in the sense of inconveniences, accidents, or unexpected luck (usually bad but not always)

Things like se me enganchó la manga en el pomo which is “my sleeve snagged on the doorknob” or more literally “the sleeve hooked itself (on/unto/at me) on the doorknob”

Or se me entumecen las manos “my hands are going numb”; se me traba la lengua “I get tongue-tied”; se me olvidó el libro “I forgot all about the book”

In all of these cases, the verb is done in 3rd person singular or plural depending on what it is:

Se me olvidó el libro. = I forgot all about the book.

Se me olvidaron las llaves. = I forgot all about the keys.

The "subjects” are all inanimate objects that do the thing “to themselves”; it’s not “I forgot my keys”, it’s more literally “the keys made themselves forgotten to me”