#reflexive

‘I'm covering my back!’

But literally: ”I cover me (myself) with kama.” Note that the instrument (kama) is peripheral and ni is the direct object of this sentence.

..........................

Who knows?

Ah, nobody knows anything.

How fragile knowledge is.

Perhaps, a sliver of truth has pierced me,

Perhaps it's only a dream.

A love could still happen, I think. Happen, I say.

But I do not know whether I should want it, or not.

In a sea of life, one which eternally simmers and evaporates,

Same drops meet, and are parted anew.

And once the desolate eternity passes through the starry road,

Perhaps the same old lips once more will join in a kiss.

Perhaps, you will show up one night,

All beautiful, in blue,

Not realizing that you've shed your light on my forgotten truths. And I,

who is writing, with my heart full of you, these foolish rhymes,

Oh, I won't know, the desire of my being, even your name.

By the evening lamps our eyes will meet like the eyes of strangers do,

Oblivious to the ancient chains that still bind us together.

And time flows.

Flows, like the Sun, in a circle,

Bringing back all that once was,

Both sorrow and joy.

And eyes will shine, hands will touch,

And hearts will rise,

And blind to the footprints of a life forgotten,

We shall follow.

Who knows?

Ah, nobody knows anything.

Perhaps a sliver of truth has pierced me,

Perhaps it's only a dream.

A love could still happen, I think. Happen, I say.

But I do not know whether I should want it, or not.

Three dimensional scene for today based on videogame River Raid. It was such a game from reflexive. And that was simple three dimensional arcades. Also including little airplane. So it fly there. It shoots. Along the river. A little to the left and to the right.

Not exactly unnecessary, but not 100% necessary. Depends on how you want to sound

The short answer is that native speakers tend to use comerse with food if they enjoy it

Quiero comer una pizza. = I want to eat a pizza.

Quiero comerme una pizza. = I want to eat a pizza. [more native-sounding]

Native speakers would more commonly use it. But not including it won't affect the overall meaning too much, people still understand what comer means

Side Note: It's important that I say comerse "with food", because... well, comerse tends to be sexual like "to eat" or "to eat out" etc

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Longer answer:

For food, native speakers are more likely to use comerse instead of regular comer for food that they're eating. I think the meta explanation is something like it's food that they enjoy eating or are happy to eat

Regular comer is fine to use, but it can come across as "the physical process of eating", like "to feed (on)"... and comerse with food has a more social or emotional connotation

The exact linguistics of it is that it falls into something like the ethical dative or the superfluous dative

Those show up with verbs that take on a slightly different meaning when they're given a reflexive, like ir is "to go" and irse is "to go away", or dormir "to sleep" and dormirse is "to fall asleep"

It's when the use of the pronomials [reflexive pronouns] are used in a way that's not truly reflexive [in reflexives the subject and the object are the same; the subject does something to itself]. That means that they use the reflexive endings but they don't really come across as reflexive... comerse with food doesn't come across as "to eat oneself" so it's not truly reflexive, in other words.

But like I said there are some verbs that will take the reflexives and sort of alter the meaning

In English we tend to do that with prepositions; "to go" and "to go away". We still understand "to go" but the directionality and distance is subtly different. It's the same with "to fall" and "to fall down", or "to move" and "to move away" or "to move out"

By adding that extra word we change the intended meaning, to the extent that we could understand the base verb [ie "go", "fall, "move"] but we might be missing context

That's the function of those reflexives there

It doesn't mean anything as far as a literal grammatical thing, but it does subtly change the meaning.

If you're presented with a verb with reflexives and it doesn't really mean "oneself/himself/herself/themselves" you're probably dealing with one of those types of verbs

As an example: acordar is "to agree" normally, but acordarse is "to remember". This is one where if you didn't use the reflexive, the meaning would change completely and people would be confused. So this is one of the ones you would want to just memorize.

Another subtle one: morir "to die", but morirse is commonly used as "to pass away" where the mood is more "suddenly" or "unexpectedly", at least in my experience. As a command, morirse [as muérete as a tú command] is like "drop dead" and it's more something said in anger. But like comer, if you used one over the other, people would more or less understand even if the tone was slightly different

...

So long story short, it's not a big deal with comer/comerse with food. But you've stumbled into a very murky linguistics thing in Spanish

This is one that isn't really taught [my info comes from more grammatical/linguistics sites and journals].

Native speakers say comerse with food without really thinking about why. Native speakers know to do it, and most wouldn't really know how to explain why if they didn't look into the grammar/linguistics of it

|09-05-2022 // 9:06 p.m|

finally getting into this after owning it for 4 years! my second donna tartt novel and i am obsessed.

she was insane for writing the secret history but the is a whole other level of genius.

Turns out, he can’t lie to you, no matter how hard he tries. All you do is look him in the eyes, and his lies dissolve into a reflexive, involuntary truth.

“Hey, Reindeer Games! Did you eat the last slice of pie?”

“No. Of course not. I don’t even like—”

“Loki...”

The trickster cringes as he slowly turns to face you. “Yes, dear?”

You stand close and stare straight into his eyes without blinking. “Did you eat the last slice of pie?”

Loki makes a few sputtering noises, his denial breaking apart on his silver tongue. He gulps. “Yes.”