Italian Course Beginner Series 54: The Reflexive Form Video Lecture | Learn Italian Language: For Beginners and Travellers

hello and welcome to another Italian
tutorial my name is Claudio and today we
go through the reflexive form by far the
topic that causes most confusion in the
Italian language the reflexive form is
when you have the subject carrying out
an action to itself and it's very common
in Italian now let's have a quick look
at an example in English you say I wash
but what you say in Italian is I wash
myself and the way you add myself is by
adding a reflexive pronoun in between
the subject and the verb just like in
this case as you can see you have your
subject pronouns I you he she ye o -
Louie lay no voy Laura and then you have
the verb to wash conjugated in the
present tense lava lava lava lava lava
amo la parte lava no this is because the
verb to wash levare is an arrow type
herb we've seen in the present simple
video that this is the right conjugation
what is the problem with this reflexive
form I told you what it is so what's the
confusion
well what confuses most people is that
in Italian you also have things like as
you can see here I have used the same
verb the verb to wash now can you guess
what this means now you see the verb
lava and you understand that it's
conjugate ER in the first person
singular and you have your subject as
well
yo lava however you don't have the right
reflexive pronoun in between the subject
and the verb you have what seems to be
what appears to be a wrong reflexive
pronoun now this is why people get
confused this is why
all people get the reflexive form wrong
it's not reflexive form unless the
subject carries out an action on the
object and the object and the subject
happen to be the same person now if I
say I wash myself he owe me lava in this
case I am washing myself I am performing
the action of washing to myself which is
me so the subject and the object are the
same to t la vie you wash yourself so
again you carry out an action on your
own person therefore you have reflexive
form now in this case I wash you ill T
lava so this is not reflexive form and T
this particle here is a pronoun indeed
but not a reflexive pronoun this in fact
is an object contracted pronoun that we
will see later on and this is when the
Italian language becomes very difficult
very tricky and very confusing and this
is why I make videos on different topics
and I make sure that each video is
self-contained
to ensure that you don't get confused so
the next time somebody is trying to
teach you the reflexive form in the
wrong way you're gonna spot it and
you're going to be crystal clear on how
the reflexive form works in Italian and
how all pronouns work now the deal here
is the secret to understanding all of
this business is to have a clear table
with all different pronouns so that you
can spot what pronoun looks exactly the
same to other pronouns because sometimes
that will happens for instance this is
an object contracted pronoun basically
it's the contraction of
they I wash you now we've covered
subject pronouns and object pronouns
already in the video called personal
pronouns because this is what they are I
wash you I is the subject you is the
object so far so good
I wash you this is why you would also
say in English but in Italian what
happens is that we get rid of the
subjects and we also contract this
pronoun and place it before the verb T
lava now as far as the meaning is
concerned these two sentences mean
exactly the same thing but this is not
very common and this is the common way
of expressing of saying I wash you the
lava now it so happens now the confusion
begins because it's so have now the risk
confusion because it so happens that the
object contracted pronoun t looks
exactly the same as the reflexive
pronoun T but they are different and if
you're going to compile a list make a
table with all the pronouns you will
spot all these differences and all these
similarities and you will never get
confused again so all you have to take
away from this video and this is
something that not many people really
manage to understand for some reason is
that if the subject and the object are
different then you do not have a
reflexive form simple as that I will
give you another example that get people
confused me chiamo cloud you this means
I call myself Claudia is this a
reflexive form or not pause the video
and think about it for a second
now it is because you have
the subject and the pronoun being the
same person chiamo is conjugated in the
first person singular so you know that
is Jia Jia mo I call so you know that
the subject is I therefore I call myself
klaudia this must be a reflexive pronoun
you're me you're me llamo Claudio this
is indeed an example of reflexive form
now let's have a look at the second
example the chiamo now is this an
example of reflexive form look at the
verb the verb is always what you have to
pay most attention at and what you have
to start analyzing from the very
beginning so we start by looking at the
verb chiamo we see that it looks exactly
the same as this one which means that
this is the very first person singular
present simple key Amara to call
so basically chiamo means I call so eel
is omitted but should be there okay so
let's add it of course in Italian we
have this further complication of the
subjects being omitted and this also
helps the confusion but there is a way
out so you start from the verb and you
understand what the subject is it can't
be but I because the conjugation is
first-person singular so I call you T
this is again something that we will
have a look at in the future it's called
object contracted pronoun so it's an
object pronoun that should be here after
the verb so it should be like this I
call you
it was moved in between the subject and
the verb yo te amo so I called you
is the subject the same as the object in
this case of course it's not I carry out
the action of calling and you received
the action so this is not reflexive form
and this is not a reflexive pronoun so
this is where the confusion comes from
let's have a look at a very quick last
example that is quite tricky me piace
man Jarrah now pause the video now if
you don't want to know the answer and
want to think about it for a second but
do you think this is a reflexive form or
not well let's have a look first things
first we look at the verb the verb is
piacere which means to seem nice to seem
good this is an edit type verb therefore
we know the conjugation of this verb and
we know that when he ends in E
it's the third-person singular
so it's either she seems nice or he
seems nice or it seems nice in this case
it's it okay it seems nice but where is
the subject the subject is here man
Jerad to eat or eating so eating seems
nice eating is carrying out the action
of seeming nice to somebody to me me is
another pronoun that we haven't covered
yet
it's called indirect object pronoun it
means to me me so basically translating
literally this sentence means eating
seems nice to me and this is what you
say in Italian to say I like eating I
like to eat
that's what you would say in English I
like to eat but translating literally is
eating seems nice to me therefore due to
the fact that the subject and the object
are not the same
this isn't reflexive you're gonna have
to practice a lot to really understand
the reflexive form now there's nothing
very difficult about the reflexive form
it's just not confusing it with
something else that looks very similar
and sound similar and unfortunately a
lot of teachers offline and online don't
help and also the fact that in Italian
you omit the subject doesn't help okay
so you have a lot of things to work
against but with this video I hope
you've realized that it's not that hard
I hope you realized the difference
between the reflexive form and something
that isn't reflexive I hope that you can
now recognize it spot it and that you
can practice on your own a little bit
and don't worry we're gonna have a
dialogue we're gonna have further videos
we're gonna cover everything that we've
touched upon in this video and we're
gonna and we're gonna make sure that
everything is clear so it's up to you
now to make sure that everything adds up
okay I think I've done enough talking
for today I really wanted to get this
straight because I think there's a lot
of videos that confuse people instead of
helping I will see you in the next video
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