It's been a while since I've written a grammar blog, so I thought this week I'd try to keep that side of things up, and go over reflexive verbs, something that I've been looking into these last few days!
Reflexive verbs are verbs where the subject and the object are the same - the action of the verb therefore 'reflects' back onto the subject. Apparently, they are much more common in French than they are in English, though I think that's more to do with how things are translated between the two languages.
Let's look at some examples.
Reflexive verbs come with a pronoun attached, which is required to show that 'reflective' quality. To wake up, to get up, to wash, and to get dressed are all reflexive verbs, and are translated as se réveiller, se lever, se laver, and s'habiller. I remember learning about these things at GCSE by going through a daily routine style thing. Anyway!
In order to say "I get up at 8.30 in the morning" in French, you say 'Je me lève à 8h30' - literally, "I get myself up". It's that "myself" bit that is the reflexive part, something that isn't always used in English as you can see, but obviously in French it's a requirement to show to whom the action is occurring - a common theme, for sure!
Chaque matin de la semaine, je me réveille à six heures du matin, et je me lève à 6h30. Je me lave, et je me brosse les dents, donc je m'habille pour le travail.
Bit of a basic run-down of my morning routine, there! So, I wake up (wake myself up) at 6am, though it takes me quite a while to come round from sleep! So I don't get up properly until 6.30 (get myself up). I wash (wash myself), and brush my teeth, then I get dressed (dress myself) for work.
Interestingly, it's only one of those verbs that we'd normally translate the same in English - I brush my teeth. Though in French, when you're doing something to a part of your body (steady on, now!), you don't use "my teeth", but simply "the teeth", and the possessive part of the sentence comes from the reflexive pronoun. It's the same with shaving - je me rase le menton (I shave my chin).
For the most part, the verbs are conjugated fairly normally, though of course with some spelling changes where required. It's the use of the reflexive pronoun that sets things apart, and there are several things to bear in mind when using them. For instance, with negations, the word order is quite important - the pronoun is considered to be a part of the verb, so the 'ne ... pas' (or whatever you're using) surrounds the whole construction - je ne m'habille pas, for example.
I find it interesting that one of the very first things people learn in French is how to say their name, which is a reflexive construction - je m'appelle. I mean, we don't really think of it when we're starting out, we just accept it that this is how you say "my name is", though of course it literally means "I call myself".
But wait - there's more!
In addition to reflexive verbs, there are also reciprocal verbs, where the action is exchanged between two objects. Se parler (to talk to each other), s'aimer (to love each other), s'entendre (to get along with each other) are all examples of these types of "pronominal verbs" - verbs that require a pronoun. It's more common these days for "reflexive verbs" to be used as a catch-all for all of the different types of pronominal verbs.
Of course, a lot of reflexive verbs can also be used normally - you can get someone else up (je lève mes enfants), you can shave someone else (le barbier rasait ma barbe), etc. There are some verbs that will only be used in this way, such as se suicider (to kill oneself), and there are others that change their meaning because of the pronoun being used, for instance se demander (to wonder, as opposed to demander, to ask) or se passer (to happen, as opposed to passer, to pass or spend time).
Other Tenses
In the passé composé, all reflexive verbs take être as an auxilliary verb. So you would say je me suis levé if you were talking about getting up in the past tense. Of course, using être does mean that the past participle needs to agree - elle s'est levée, and so on.
For non-compound tenses, it's a more straightforward case of just conjugating the verb and including the pronoun - je m'asseyais (I used to sit), etc.
The Tricky Bit
Now then, there is something that confounds the issue here, and it's agreement. The reflexive pronoun can function as a direct or indirect object, and determining whether the past participle agrees with the subject is based on this. Only direct objects require agreement. The example that I came across a while ago and always like to trot out is "she shaved her legs", because I feel that it makes this much clearer than faffing about with all this talk of objects!
Elle s'est rasé les jambes. The past participle rasé does not agree with the subject elle, because the direct object of the sentence is les jambes - the legs are receiving the action of shaving. The reflexive pronoun se is therefore functioning as an indirect object. To be a bit silly, if we're to say "she shaved herself", then we would require the agreement because herself is the recipient of the action of shaving, and therefore she becomes her own direct object! Elle s'est rasée.
It can be a very tricky rule, and it's one that I've heard that French people themselves sometimes trip up over, but it's there, so it needs to be mentioned!
This is pretty much it, anyway! I think one of the most common reasons for people struggling with these verbs when learning French is due to the fact that there are so many verbs that are reflexive in French, but the English equivalents aren't really used with the reflexive sort of "myself", etc.
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