MYSELF, YOURSELF: Introduction to Reflexive Pronouns in English

311,662 views ・ 2012-03-28

Learn English with Rebecca


Please double-click on the English subtitles below to play the video.

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Hi, I have an English question for you.
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Which of the following sentences is correct, in your opinion?
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Is it this one, "I enjoyed", or is it this one, "I enjoyed myself"?
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Okay?
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Even if we change it a little bit and say, "I enjoyed at the party" or "I enjoyed myself
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at the party".
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Which of these sentences is correct, in your opinion?
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Well, this is the correct one, and in a few minutes, you're going to understand exactly
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why it's correct.
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All right?
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My name is Rebecca, and in today's lesson, we're going to talk about reflexive pronouns.
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All right?
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I know that's a big title, but it actually describes something which we use quite often
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in English, and let me explain to you in a simple way what a reflexive pronoun is, when
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we use it, and how to use it.
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Okay?
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That way, you'll sound a lot more correct and authentic in English.
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So a reflexive pronoun is a pronoun that refers to the subject of the sentence.
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So here, "myself" is a reflexive pronoun which refers to what? to the subject of the sentence,
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which is "I", right?
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In other words, the subject, "I", and the object, "myself", are the same person, right?
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So let's differentiate this from a regular kind of sentence, where we don't use a reflexive
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pronoun, okay?
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In this diagram, I hope you can see it, there's a woman and this is a man, and I could say,
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"She is looking at him."
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In this case, "she" and "he" are two different people, correct?
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So there is no need for me to use a reflexive pronoun here.
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"She is looking at him."
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All right?
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Different people, no reflexive pronoun.
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However, in this diagram, "he", and this is supposed to be a diagram of the same man in
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a mirror, okay?
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If you could use your imagination, "He is looking at himself."
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Now, this person and this person are the same person.
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So when we're talking about the same person, when the action is being done to the same
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person, then we need to use a reflexive pronoun.
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So here we would say, not, "He is looking at him", because if I said, "He is looking
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at him", the "him" has to be someone else, but here, "He is looking at himself in the
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mirror."
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I'm looking at myself in the mirror, he's looking at himself, okay?
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All right.
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So let's go on now to see how to use it.
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So "I enjoy myself", "You enjoy yourself", "He enjoys himself", "She enjoys herself",
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let's say, "The dog enjoys itself", okay?
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Or "The dog heard itself", all right?
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Like that.
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"We enjoy ourselves", or "We enjoyed ourselves at the party", "We enjoyed ourselves when
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we were on vacation", "Did you enjoy yourselves?"
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Now this is plural, right?
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Here, in this column, these are all singular, and these in this column are all plural, and
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therefore we see "self" in the singular becomes "selves" in the plural.
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"We enjoyed ourselves", you cannot say, "We enjoyed ourself", because there's more than
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one person.
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"You", meaning a group of at least two people or more, "You enjoyed yourselves", "They enjoyed
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themselves", okay?
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So that's how you use it in the singular or plural form.
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Now let's look at the context of when we use this.
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So there are three situations usually when we use reflexive pronouns.
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I talked about the first one already.
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This is when we have the same object, same subject and object.
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The subject and object are referring to the same person or thing.
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So the example of this is "I hurt myself", right?
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The action is being done to me, so "I hurt myself".
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Other examples of verbs which are used like this, "I enjoyed myself", "He cut himself",
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"She blames herself", "They taught themselves how to speak German", okay?
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They taught themselves, okay?
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Or "They introduced themselves to each other", okay?
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See how you can do that?
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The two people introduced themselves to each other, okay?
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Or sometimes people go up, you could say if you go to a party and you don't know anyone
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and you want to introduce yourself, you could say, "Let me introduce myself.
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My name is", okay?
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That way.
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Now we could also use reflexive pronouns when they are the object of a preposition.
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I know that seems like a lot of grammar words, but let's understand.
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It's really pretty simple.
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Here's an example sentence, "I bought a book for myself", alright?
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"I bought a book for myself".
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So here, "myself" is being used as the object of the preposition "for".
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You could also say in this category things like, "Sometimes when I'm alone, I talk to
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myself", or "I went to the restaurant and paid for myself", or sometimes we say to someone,
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right?
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"Take care of yourself", not "Take care of you", "Take care", or sometimes we say the
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fuller sentence, "Take care of yourself".
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In other words, "You please take care of yourself".
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So here also, because we have a preposition.
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And the last category where we use reflexive pronouns is when we want to emphasize something.
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So someone could say, "It's okay, I don't need any help, I'll carry it myself".
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That means I will carry it by myself, alone, I don't need any help, or if you're very proud
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you could say, "Hey, I did it myself".
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In other words, you want to emphasize that you didn't use anyone's help, you just did
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it all by yourself, okay?
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So if it's a new subject, go over it a little bit in a grammar book, it will help you.
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You could also try to do our quiz, and that will give you a lot of practice in the use
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of reflexive pronouns, they are important.
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Because when you don't use it, and you say something like, "I enjoyed" at the party,
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it's actually wrong in English.
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So you want to be able to say, "I enjoyed myself".
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Or you want to ask someone, "Did you enjoy yourself?"
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So I hope you enjoyed this lesson.
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If you want to do the quiz, again, go to our website, www.engvid.com.
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Thanks very much, good luck with your English.
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