General Need Spanish Help

Chris Teves

Chris Teves

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Hello everyone,
I'm currently in a Spanish 3 class at school and I need help with reflexive verbs. Can anyone give me tips on how to conjugate with them? Google isn't much help!

Thanks!
 
Spanish verbs are incredibly hard to properly conjugate if you're not a native speaker of the language. If you have to master various tenses, try learning your verbs in the present first, then move on to the next, and so on and so forth. Other tenses tend to be variations of the present forms, but there are a LOT of irregular verbs. Your best bet is honestly just memorizing them.
 
Chris Teves said:
Hello everyone,
I'm currently in a Spanish 3 class at school and I need help with reflexive verbs. Can anyone give me tips on how to conjugate with them? Google isn't much help!

Thanks!
Click to expand...
Glad to hear you're taking your third year of Spanish! I've studied Spanish for only two years but because I had a private instructor I was able to learn a lot!
So as you may already know, the reflexive form of a Spanish verb has "se" at the end of it. The use is as follows:
Lavar- to wash
Lavarse- to wash onesself

So the way to conjugate these verbs is by memorizing these reflexive verbs:
me (myself)
te (yourself)
se (himself, herself, yourself)
nos (ourselves)
os (yourselves)
se (themselves, yourselves)

and using them before the reflexive verb! Once you memorize these pronouns it becomes much easier.
Yo lavo- I wash
Yo me lavarse- I wash myself

Hope this helps!
 
DragonFang101 said:
Glad to hear you're taking your third year of Spanish! I've studied Spanish for only two years but because I had a private instructor I was able to learn a lot!
So as you may already know, the reflexive form of a Spanish verb has "se" at the end of it. The use is as follows:
Lavar- to wash
Lavarse- to wash onesself

So the way to conjugate these verbs is by memorizing these reflexive verbs:
me (myself)
te (yourself)
se (himself, herself, yourself)
nos (ourselves)
os (yourselves)
se (themselves, yourselves)

and using them before the reflexive verb! Once you memorize these pronouns it becomes much easier.
Yo lavo- I wash
Yo me lavarse- I wash myself

Hope this helps!
Click to expand...

This does really help! But, do I still conjugate the verb if I'm using it in reflexive? For example, do I keep it as Yo me lavarse, or do I change it like normal like Yo me lavo or yo me lavose? I've also noticed there are some instances where the reflexive part comes at the end of a verb, like lavarme. How do I know when to put it at the front or end?

Thanks for all the help! This really does help!
 
You always conjugate it unless you're using lavarse. (Yo me lavo, tu te lavas, etc.) It always goes in the beginning unless you're saying something like "I went to wash myself" in which case you'd say "fui a lavarme".
 
Chris Teves said:
This does really help! But, do I still conjugate the verb if I'm using it in reflexive? For example, do I keep it as Yo me lavarse, or do I change it like normal like Yo me lavo or yo me lavose? I've also noticed there are some instances where the reflexive part comes at the end of a verb, like lavarme. How do I know when to put it at the front or end?

Thanks for all the help! This really does help!
Click to expand...
Vom's post above explains it ^ ^
 
Vom said:
You always conjugate it unless you're using lavarse. (Yo me lavo, tu te lavas, etc.) It always goes in the beginning unless you're saying something like "I went to wash myself" in which case you'd say "fui a lavarme".
Click to expand...

Ah, I see. Okay thanks! I'm going to practice a little more, but thanks for all the help! I think I'm getting it now!
 
Hi Chris. I'm Argentinian and a native Spanish speaker. Any help you might need with Spanish feel free to ask me.
 
Hey, I need some help with Spanish as well.. How do you say, "Are you a Pokemon Trainer? Because you just captured my heart!" in Spanish?
Or how about "Girl, you make my Onix evolve into Steelix"?
 
bbb888 said:
Hey, I need some help with Spanish as well.. How do you say, "Are you a Pokemon Trainer? Because you just captured my heart!" in Spanish?
Click to expand...
When I offered my help, I was referring to help to understand grammar rules or how to compose a sentence correctly. What you are asking can be easily done with Google Translate.

bbb888 said:
Or how about "Girl, you make my Onix evolve into Steelix"?
Click to expand...
DragonFang101 said:
Wanna see my Master Balls?
Click to expand...
I wonder if this complies with the forum rules.
 
Mariano11887 said:
When I offered my help, I was referring to help to understand grammar rules or how to compose a sentence correctly. What you are asking can be easily done with Google Translate.



I wonder if this complies with the forum rules.
Click to expand...
If anyone has a problem I'll just post this
 
Hello everyone,
I just took my Spanish quiz today on Reflexive Verbs and I think it went well. Thanks for all the help! I'll let you guys know if I have any more questions with future units.

Thanks a lot!
 
Hey guys, I have a question.

How do I know when to use preterite or the imperfect tense? They're both past tense I believe, but I just don't know when to use one or the other.

Thanks!
 
They are both used for a narrative taking place in the past, but preterite is used for actions in general and imperfect is used for events that, from the point of view of the narrative you're telling, happened in the past. It's kind of hard to explain because English has no real equivalent and instead uses other forms of past.

For example, let's say that I had a test last month, and the day before I had my test I drank some coffee. Now, if I wanted to tell this to someone, I would use preterite for whatever happened the day of the test, and imperfect for events that happened beforehand (in this example, the coffee).

Like I said, it's hard to explain if English is your only language as it has no equivalent, but once you get used to it it's not that hard.
 
Hello everyone,
Thank you all for the help! I'm glad to say I got an A this semester in my Spanish 3 class!

However, I have a question that is slightly different than the previous grammar questions:

I'm in a play right now called Love's Labour's Lost by William Shakespeare and I am playing the part of Don Armado. He is a Spanish soldier. The director told me I should have a Spanish accent. I started thinking about this and wondered how to do a Spanish accent. I thought of some of the speaking conventions in Spanish and have started to use that as a starting point. Here's what I've got so far:
double l's (ll) - y sound
r - rolled sometimes
h - silent
j - h sound

Are there any other tips anyone has for doing a Spanish accent?

Please let me know.

Thanks,
Chris
 
Chris Teves said:
Hello everyone,
Thank you all for the help! I'm glad to say I got an A this semester in my Spanish 3 class!

However, I have a question that is slightly different than the previous grammar questions:

I'm in a play right now called Love's Labour's Lost by William Shakespeare and I am playing the part of Don Armado. He is a Spanish soldier. The director told me I should have a Spanish accent. I started thinking about this and wondered how to do a Spanish accent. I thought of some of the speaking conventions in Spanish and have started to use that as a starting point. Here's what I've got so far:
double l's (ll) - y sound
r - rolled sometimes
h - silent
j - h sound

Are there any other tips anyone has for doing a Spanish accent?

Please let me know.

Thanks,
Chris
Click to expand...
I know one. "I" should sound more like "Ahh". Don't put so much mouth effort into vowels like you do in English!
 
Chris Teves said:
Hello everyone,
Thank you all for the help! I'm glad to say I got an A this semester in my Spanish 3 class!

However, I have a question that is slightly different than the previous grammar questions:

I'm in a play right now called Love's Labour's Lost by William Shakespeare and I am playing the part of Don Armado. He is a Spanish soldier. The director told me I should have a Spanish accent. I started thinking about this and wondered how to do a Spanish accent. I thought of some of the speaking conventions in Spanish and have started to use that as a starting point. Here's what I've got so far:
double l's (ll) - y sound
r - rolled sometimes
h - silent
j - h sound

Are there any other tips anyone has for doing a Spanish accent?

Please let me know.

Thanks,
Chris
Click to expand...
First of all, there are different Spanish accents depending on the region or the country. For example:

- The double L (ll): In most of latin america countries and Spain, this is pronounced like the Y in "Yanma", but here in Argentina we pronounce it like the sh in "shame". If the director didn't tell you which region you need to represent the accent, I'd go with the first one because it's used in more countries.
- The R: If the letter is at the beginning of a word (like "Rubí") it is pronounced like the R in "Rock" but stronger than in English. To make it stronger, you need to make your tongue vibrate by expeling air while pronouncing it. It's very hard to explain it in a forum, hehe. In any other case where the R is in the middle or the end of a word (like "arte" or "hablar") the sound is weaker, very similar to how you pronounce "art".
- The H: This is simple, it is always silent. If you read a word with an H, just ignore it.
- The J: Like you said, it's similar to your H sound, like "hey" or "Harry" but pronounced stronger. The sound should come from a deeper part of your throat.

DragonFang101 said:
I know one. "I" should sound more like "Ahh". Don't put so much mouth effort into vowels like you do in English!
Click to expand...
This is a good advice. Just know the following: in American English there are 15 different vowel sounds, in Spanish there are only 5 represented by A, E, I, O and U.

I hope it helps!
 
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