Reflexive pronouns | The parts of speech | Grammar | Khan Academy Video Lecture | Complete Course on English Grammar: Upgrade your Speaking & Listening - Personal Skills

hello grammarians let's talk about
reflexive pronouns and just as a word of
warning this means I'm going to be
talking about myself a lot what I mean
is that in English we have this
distinction between the personal pronoun
so for example me and it's reflexive
pronoun which is myself and we use these
pronouns in very specific cases so I'm
going to show you what all of those
reflexive pronouns look like contrasted
with their personal pronoun forms and
then we're going to talk about how we
use them so so the first person we say
personal pronoun is me the reflexive
pronoun is myself the first person
plural personal pronoun is us and the
reflexive form of that is ourselves then
in the second person both plural and
singular personal pronoun is you and
then in the reflexive it can either be
yourself when you're addressing one
person or yourselves when the you you
are talking to consists of more than one
person the singular third-person
pronouns look like this it her and him
and the reflective versions are as
follows itself herself and himself
finally the personal pronoun them
becomes the reflexive pronoun themselves
now all of these are what we would call
object pronouns they can all be the
object of a verb so they're never the
Dewar's they're always the dewey's with
the exception of you or it none of these
pronouns can be the subject of a
sentence in standard American English it
is not grammatical to say me eat a
cookie for example it's part of why
Cookie Monster sounds so funny so then
the question becomes when do you use
these so place for these object pronouns
to go is in the back end of a sentence
what we call the predicate where the
object of the verb lives so for example
she poked me she is the subject of the
sentence and me is the object is the
object of the verb poked it is the Dewey
it is the thing that something is done
to and not the doer so that's when you
use object pronouns generally but when
do you use reflexive pronouns you use
reflexive pronouns when the subject and
the object of a sentence are the same
thing let me show you an example
sentence
Janell made herself breakfast so in this
sentence herself and Janelle the same
person as opposed to the other
possibility which is Janelle making
breakfast for someone else
Janelle made us breakfast and in this
case this this usage is not reflective
she's not doing a thing for herself or
to herself she's doing she's making
breakfast for other people and so you
just used the regular personal object
pronoun there you can only use a
reflexive pronoun when the subject and
the object of the sentence are the same
thing
Janelle is the same thing as herself
Janelle is not the same thing as us so
we would say us here and not ourselves
how about this one Roderick saw me in
the mirror now I am NOT named Roderick
I'm not the same thing as Roderick and
if I were writing a sentence about
myself I would say I saw myself in the
mirror Roderick and I and me are not the
same person I and myself are the same
person the same person as Roderick is
Roderick so if we were to say Roderick
saw Roderick in the mirror we would
render that as Roderick saw himself
because the subject here and the object
here are the same thing so remember you
use reflexive pronouns when the subject
and the object of a sentence are the
same thing it's really easy to get
tripped up this way especially if
there's a compound object in the
sentence for example you can talk to
Vidya or myself I see this all the time
and in standard American English this is
not correct because you is not the same
thing as me and it's easy to get
confused because you're talking about to
two people here in this in this object
and that's a little bubbling it kind of
throws you off and so there's a test you
can do if you're unsure of whether or
not it should be video or myself or
Vidya or me which is what I would say
how do you tell take the other person
out of the object just for a little bit
so would you say you can talk to myself
would you say you can talk
to me well since we know that U is not
the same thing as myself and you can
only use reflexive pronouns when the
subject and the object are the same
thing
the answer is me so then we bring Vidya
back we bring the other part of the
object back and it becomes you can talk
to Vidya or me so when in doubt sub it
out take the other part of the object
and just pretend it's not there and just
think about how the subject and the
object connect chances are you won't
actually end up using a reflexive
pronoun perform that little check and
you'll never go wrong
you can learn anything David out