What are reflexives? Concept: Reflexive--think about the word itself: RE means BACK and FLEX means BEND. Reflexive verbs are those which bend backwards to reflect the same recipient of the action as the subject. This means that the person who does the action also receives it. For example, look at the Spanish verb ME VISTO. The O on VISTO tells you that the subject is YO. If you were to draw a backward arrow from VISTO to ME, you would see that the subject and the recipient of the action are one and the same. ME VISTO in English is "I dress myself". Here again, the subject (I) and the recipient of the action (myself) are the same-both refer to the same person. In simpler terms, reflexive verbs are those which you do to yourself, for example, you dress yourself, bathe yourself, clothe yourself, etc. Recognition: You can recognize an infinitive as reflexive by the way it ends-in a SE, for example BANARSE means to bathe oneself and VESTIRSE means to dress oneself. You can also think of these as GET verbs, to get dressed, to get bathed, to get sick, to get married, etc. Many GET verbs are reflexive. Also, not all reflexive verbs are things that you do to yourself. Some are emotional or involuntary, such as enojarse (to get angry) or desmayarse (to faint) or even dormirse (to fall asleep). Others imply direction such as irse (to go away). The best practice is to memorize verbs that end in SE as reflexives. A note of caution: Several verbs can be used reflexively or non-reflexively. What you need to keep in mind is whether or not the doer and the recipient are one and the same. When the are, the verb is reflexive, such as I dress myself. When they are NOT, they verb is NOT reflexive, such as I dress the baby. Formation: Reflexive verbs conjugate like any other. There are regulars, irregulars, and stem changes. If you are unfamiliar with stem change verbs, refer to earlier sections treating them. Since each reflexive verb bends backwards to reflect its (same) recipient, you need a reflexive pronoun in front of the conjugated verb. The reflexive pronouns, which ALWAYS come in front of one-word regularly conjugated verbs are: Me, Te, Se, Nos, Os and SE, thus Llamarse (to call oneself, i.e. to be named) conjugates in the present tense as follows: Me llamo Nos llamamos Te llamas Os llamáis Se llama Se llaman In the exercise that follows, I provide the infinitive so that you may concentrate on forming the verbs without vocabulary interference. Conjugate the verbs with the subjects provided.