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[superslayer18.livejournal.com]

Question about reflexive verbs:

I know that verbs that are pretty much always reflexive will end in sya (I can't use Cyrillic on this comp, I'm not at home). I was wondering what you do with verbs that aren't reflexive in nature. For example, "to teach". In English, you would say "I teach you" or "I teach him". Verbs in English can easily be reflexive by just saying "I teach myself" instead of "I teach me".

So, in Russian, would you say "I teach me" (menya) or is there another word for "myself" in this situation? Best I can think of, it would either be "menya" or "cebya". Would both of them work, or just one of the two, or neither at all? Menya sounds a little funny, but hey... Russian is a funny language sometimes ^_~

ETA: When would you use "cama"? (sama... my attempt at using Latin letters instead of cyrillic, but hey, these are all pretty much the same lol)

Comments

[meutererin.livejournal.com]

Actually, we say "я учусь", it's a reflexive verb =)

[superslayer18.livejournal.com]

that was just an example I made up out of something in English... I meant something in general, when there is a verb that isn't usually reflexive.

[med99.livejournal.com]

Not much fun here. Себя and -ся are the exclusive and universal reflexive forms and are entirely person-independent. So, я учусь or я себя учу ('I learn' and 'I teach myself', respectively, but the latter phrase is of much more limited usage than in English). Nothing like the "yo me enseño, tu te enseñas"/"ich lehre mich, du lehrst dich" of Western European languages exists in Russian. It's always -ся or себя, like a wildcard.

[ducking.livejournal.com]

Usually there's a pair of verbs - one normal, one reflective.
Compare:
учить - учиться
мыть - мыться
слушать - слушаться
And so on.
So, actually, in Russian, you can often derive a reflective verb from a normal verb simply by adding "ся" at the end - if it's possible at all (and for many verbs it isn't, i.e. петь, есть etc.).
You can even consider "учиться" as an abbreviation of "учить себя", and it wouldn't be that far from being true, though I must admit that saying "Я учу себя" as well as "Я учу меня" doesn't sound Russian at all.

[http://users.livejournal.com/__marginal/]

I teach myself can be said in two ways: "Я учу себя" or "Я учусь" (more common). The latter can be translated as "I'm learinig" or "I learn" rather then "I'm teaching myself".

I don't know the proper English liguistic terms for these things.

"Себя" is an equivalet of words myself, yourself, themselves, etc.
In Russian "себя" is called возвратное местоимение.

-ся is something like an abbreviation of себя. In some words it has meaning "oneself": учиться, мыться, but in some other words this meaning is lost: драться (it doesn't mean "драть себя").

[superslayer18.livejournal.com]

Thanks for the Spanish example. My spanish is lot better than my Russian, so that was a good way to understand.

Now lets go to my made up world: In my made up world, the Spanish equivilent of "cebya" would be ce (again, making this up). So, to draw some kind of a parallel, "yo ce enseño" would be it, and you would also say "tu ce enseñas", right? The reflexive particle, ce/cebya, then reflexs on whatever the subject of the sentence is?

I hope you understood that lol

[superslayer18.livejournal.com]

if it's possible at all (and for many verbs it isn't, i.e. петь, есть etc.)

hahah "I eat myself" lol.

Oy there are even MORE pairs of verbs? Its bad enough dealing with perfective/imperfective, now we have reflexive and non-reflexive too? Oh dear lol. Thanks for your help!

[med99.livejournal.com]

Yes, exactly. You can think of it as of the English myself, yourself etc., but without the first bit: "I teach 'self", "You amuse 'self", and so on.

[meutererin.livejournal.com]

Then we say "себя"

[aciel.livejournal.com]

Isn't it se, not ce?

[superslayer18.livejournal.com]

in actual spanish, se is used for the third person. I purposely made one up to show that relationship with cebya, and said a few times that this is all made up lol.

But in actual spanish, its me, te, se, nos, and vos.

[apollotiger.livejournal.com]

Well, there /are/ people who can do that ...

*ducks*

[wolk-off.livejournal.com]

To make things worse, you actually can make up reflective versions of some verbs that normally aren't reflective! Those versions are quite colloquial, though, but they are at least understandable by native speakers - of course, if you feel the right context for it.
A few examples. You made a good laugh out of "I eat myself" above. Well, you cannot say that even in Russian :))), but there actually may be a reflective (very colloquial!) form of "to eat":
- Кислая капуста с маслом естся гораздо лучше, чем без масла.
The sour cabbage with [vegetable] oil tastes (literally, eats itself) much better than without oil.
- Что-то мне сегодня не идётся на работу.
For some reason I don't feel good when going to work today (literally, it doesn't goes itself [right]).
Those two are really colloquial, but quite legitimate. But the next only is not "just quite legitimate" - it's legitimate all right, even Aleksandr Pushkin uses it! :))
- [мне] не спится, няня! (from "Eugene Onegin")
I cannot go to sleep, nunny! (literally, it doesn't sleep itself [to me]).

This construction is called "affective impersonal" (аффективный имперсонал) : it is a personless construction involving the subject in dative case, with the modal meaning of something that is not under the subject's control, like in:

мне сегодня не спится (не читается, не пишется, не гуляется)
/I can't get some sleep (read anything, write something, take a walk) today/I'm not in the mood for sleeping (reading, writing, walking) today/

ему не лежится (не сидится) на месте;
/he cannot lie down (sit down) quietly literally, at his place/

сегодня хорошо дышится
/[one] breathes good today - i.e. it's a good air today, nice for breathing/

More details here (http://www.krugosvet.ru/articles/90/1009066/1009066a2.htm) (in Russian; for REALLY advanced learners - I personally have troubles getting through certain parts of that article :))

[wolk-off.livejournal.com]

As for this cama/sama thing, I just don't get the quesion :))

[apollotiger.livejournal.com]

*laughs* Using Latin letters instead of Cyrillic often ends up with weird capitalizations -- e.g. "Het" looks something like n^jet, but HET looks exactly the same ...

[superslayer18.livejournal.com]

**When would you use "sama" instead of "sebya"?**

[superslayer18.livejournal.com]

I was think of writing out CAMA, but I didn't want it to seem too emphasized lol.

[wolk-off.livejournal.com]

Still don't get it. That's what I want to ask you. When would one use "сама" (herself) instead of "себя" (...-self)? Well, there is that "сама себя" form. На этой картине она изобразила сама себя (on this picture, she has drawn herself.) But "сама" doesn't sunstitute for "себя" here, it's two parts of a set expression (more examples: за такие вещи я сам себя ингода ненавижу -- I hate myself sometimes for the things like that. Он теперь бизнесмен: работает сам на себя, сам себя нанял, сам себе хозяин. -- He's a businessmen now: works for himself, hires himself, he's his own employer [literally, his own master].

[superslayer18.livejournal.com]

ohhhh okay gotcha. I thought that CAMA was just sebya in a different case, like the accusative form of it or something I dunno lol. thank you ^_~

[wolk-off.livejournal.com]

No, сам (сама F, само N) is a separate word with similar meaning but different usage.
- Кто это? - Это не кто иной, как он сам. ("Who's that?" - "It's none other than he himself".)
Сам Игорь никогда не сомневался, что он - самый умный в классе, но учителя были другого мнения (Igor himself never doubted that he was the smartest in the class, but the teachers thought different [literally, were of different opinion].)

[ducking.livejournal.com]

Well, business as usual - there's a lot for me to learn about my native language.
I didn't mention those applications as I thought they were seriously advanced.

[wolk-off.livejournal.com]

They really are advanced, but still quite widely used, so it's useful to, at least, recognize them in Russian text (even if it's too early for somebody to use them.)

[superslayer18.livejournal.com]

Okay I understand now. You're examples are so entertaining and random lol.

[temcat.livejournal.com]

What about целоваться? It does NOT mean целовать себя ;-)

[solito.livejournal.com]

Please note that Russian and Spanish have significant differences in the reflexive verbs' use.

In Spanish, there are three main forms of reflexiveness:
1) When the action "returns" to the object (i.e. the object = the subject). Ex. afeitarse, peinarse, enseñarse. Cp. in Russian - бриться (= брить себя), причёсываться (= причёсывать себя)
2) When there are two actions directed in reciprocally opposed directions between S and O. Ex. Nos amigamos, Nos amamos. There is no such a form in Russian, though some reflexive verbs have slight meaning of this reciprocal reflexiveness - мы дуемся друг на друга, мы ругаемся друг с другом.
Frequently these forms are accompanied by друг с другом, друг на друга.
3) When the Subject is deeply involved into the action - Ex. Reirse. This form does not exist in Russian directly.

I think it would be useful for you to read about these things in more details in the comparative grammar books.

In Russian, the situation is much more complicated. First of all, not all the verbs ending in postfix "-ся" are really reflexive. Second, there are many different types of reflexive verbs, some are similar to those mentioned above - собственно-возвратные, взаимно-возвратные, косвенно-возвратные, активно-безобъектные and so on. See in more details in the paragraphs 1468-1471 in the Russian Academic Grammar
http://rusgram.narod.ru/1455-1489.html
- it's in Russian and is rather complicated - I swear not all native speakers will understand that.

Hope it helps.