"Es bewegt sich."

Translation: It moves.

[DHausman]

Why not "It moves itself" or "It moves on its own"?

[Delta1212]

Because "to move" is just reflexive in German, unlike English.

If you want to translate "It moves" into German, you have to say "Es bewegt sich."

I'd probably translate "It moves itself" as "Es bewegt sich selber" but I'm not a native speaker and that's not something I've ever had to say before, so you might want a native to weigh in on that.

[PolyglotCiro]

Ich bewege mich: I am moving?

[Bersalon]

Correct.

[DrakonyanAzkar]

It's just like in Portuguese "está se movendo". If we just say "está movendo" ("It is moving"), it means that is moves something. Same probably applies in German.

[farzaneh423501]

Du bewegst dich=You are moving

[saeed118]

i am confused about reflective verbs, sometimes sich come before and sometimes after
bewegen sich and sich waschen?

[Delta1212]

I'm not sure what the sentence with sich waschen is, but I'm going to assume that the source of confusion isn't actually reflexive verbs so much as verb placement in general.

Verb placement in German sentences is very important, and the rest of the sentence arranges itself to accommodate wherever the verb is supposed to go. So:

Except with some forms of questions, the verb occupies the second position in the sentence. That doesn't mean the second word, as you can have whole sub-clauses in the "first position" but the verb is always the second "thing" in the sentence.

If there is more than one verb in the sentence, everything after the first one goes to the end.

If there is a subordinate clause (generally beginning with words like "dass" "weil" or "wenn"), the verb goes to the end of the clause.

That will give you things like:

Ich wasche mich.

Ich werde mich waschen.

Ich bin nie schmutzig, weil ich mich wasche.

Verb placement is very important to the structure of German sentences. Once you get that down, and understand where the verb is supposed to go, the rest of the sentence is much easier, and often more flexible than English about where you can put things.

[Jd_jd_jd]

I appreciate the thorough explanation

[Nosferotica]

Eppur si mueve

[mouss12]

Bewegen ist ein reflexiv Verb

[Neimarg]

Does this phrasing require the thing to be moving under its own power?

[Marcingham]

Yes!

[Dimas_Akmal]

What does the word 'sich' mean ?

[Delta1212]

It's a reflexive pronoun. Essentially, in German, "to move" just means "to move something." In order to say that something is moving, you need to say that it moves itself.

[colin130508]

As an english speaker, you can say it moves itself as opposed to being moved by something else. The phrase does nt sound odd to me.

[AmirEF]

"sich bewegen" vs "bewegen"? Is one transitive and the other one not?

[Burville]

This lesson is a disgrace. This time we are asked to type what we hear in German and the "correct" answer is in English.