MYSELF, YOURSELF: Introduction to Reflexive Pronouns in English

Hi, I have an English question for you.

Which of the following sentences is correct, in your opinion?

Is it this one, "I enjoyed", or is it this one, "I enjoyed myself"?

Okay?

Even if we change it a little bit and say, "I enjoyed at the party" or "I enjoyed myself

at the party".

Which of these sentences is correct, in your opinion?

Well, this is the correct one, and in a few minutes, you're going to understand exactly

why it's correct.

All right?

My name is Rebecca, and in today's lesson, we're going to talk about reflexive pronouns.

All right?

I know that's a big title, but it actually describes something which we use quite often

in English, and let me explain to you in a simple way what a reflexive pronoun is, when

we use it, and how to use it.

Okay?

That way, you'll sound a lot more correct and authentic in English.

So a reflexive pronoun is a pronoun that refers to the subject of the sentence.

So here, "myself" is a reflexive pronoun which refers to what? to the subject of the sentence,

which is "I", right?

In other words, the subject, "I", and the object, "myself", are the same person, right?

So let's differentiate this from a regular kind of sentence, where we don't use a reflexive

pronoun, okay?

In this diagram, I hope you can see it, there's a woman and this is a man, and I could say,

"She is looking at him."

In this case, "she" and "he" are two different people, correct?

So there is no need for me to use a reflexive pronoun here.

"She is looking at him."

All right?

Different people, no reflexive pronoun.

However, in this diagram, "he", and this is supposed to be a diagram of the same man in

a mirror, okay?

If you could use your imagination, "He is looking at himself."

Now, this person and this person are the same person.

So when we're talking about the same person, when the action is being done to the same

person, then we need to use a reflexive pronoun.

So here we would say, not, "He is looking at him", because if I said, "He is looking

at him", the "him" has to be someone else, but here, "He is looking at himself in the

mirror."

I'm looking at myself in the mirror, he's looking at himself, okay?

All right.

So let's go on now to see how to use it.

So "I enjoy myself", "You enjoy yourself", "He enjoys himself", "She enjoys herself",

let's say, "The dog enjoys itself", okay?

Or "The dog heard itself", all right?

Like that.

"We enjoy ourselves", or "We enjoyed ourselves at the party", "We enjoyed ourselves when

we were on vacation", "Did you enjoy yourselves?"

Now this is plural, right?

Here, in this column, these are all singular, and these in this column are all plural, and

therefore we see "self" in the singular becomes "selves" in the plural.

"We enjoyed ourselves", you cannot say, "We enjoyed ourself", because there's more than

one person.

"You", meaning a group of at least two people or more, "You enjoyed yourselves", "They enjoyed

themselves", okay?

So that's how you use it in the singular or plural form.

Now let's look at the context of when we use this.

So there are three situations usually when we use reflexive pronouns.

I talked about the first one already.

This is when we have the same object, same subject and object.

The subject and object are referring to the same person or thing.

So the example of this is "I hurt myself", right?

The action is being done to me, so "I hurt myself".

Other examples of verbs which are used like this, "I enjoyed myself", "He cut himself",

"She blames herself", "They taught themselves how to speak German", okay?

They taught themselves, okay?

Or "They introduced themselves to each other", okay?

See how you can do that?

The two people introduced themselves to each other, okay?

Or sometimes people go up, you could say if you go to a party and you don't know anyone

and you want to introduce yourself, you could say, "Let me introduce myself.

My name is", okay?

That way.

Now we could also use reflexive pronouns when they are the object of a preposition.

I know that seems like a lot of grammar words, but let's understand.

It's really pretty simple.

Here's an example sentence, "I bought a book for myself", alright?

"I bought a book for myself".

So here, "myself" is being used as the object of the preposition "for".

You could also say in this category things like, "Sometimes when I'm alone, I talk to

myself", or "I went to the restaurant and paid for myself", or sometimes we say to someone,

right?

"Take care of yourself", not "Take care of you", "Take care", or sometimes we say the

fuller sentence, "Take care of yourself".

In other words, "You please take care of yourself".

So here also, because we have a preposition.

And the last category where we use reflexive pronouns is when we want to emphasize something.

So someone could say, "It's okay, I don't need any help, I'll carry it myself".

That means I will carry it by myself, alone, I don't need any help, or if you're very proud

you could say, "Hey, I did it myself".

In other words, you want to emphasize that you didn't use anyone's help, you just did

it all by yourself, okay?

So if it's a new subject, go over it a little bit in a grammar book, it will help you.

You could also try to do our quiz, and that will give you a lot of practice in the use

of reflexive pronouns, they are important.

Because when you don't use it, and you say something like, "I enjoyed" at the party,

it's actually wrong in English.

So you want to be able to say, "I enjoyed myself".

Or you want to ask someone, "Did you enjoy yourself?"

So I hope you enjoyed this lesson.

If you want to do the quiz, again, go to our website, www.engvid.com.

Thanks very much, good luck with your English.