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- Topic: Italian >
- "Vede se stessa."
29 Comments
189
These are really helpful, thank you :) So if I am a women, it is 'Cucino per me stessa?', right?
586
Cheers, I just put forward a question to a similar question where "...nello specchio (..in the mirror) is in the statement. This is the exactly answer that I needed.
1018
"Se stesso" would be "himself", "se stessa" is "herself", "se stesse/i" would be "themselves". Normally you'd use "sé" so it isn't confused with the conjunction "se" which means "if". But apparently if you follow "se" with stesso/stessa/stesse/stessi you can relax that rule (you can either use "se stessa" or "sé stessa", it doesn't matter). "sé" means "himself/herself/itself", while stesso/stessa/stessi/stesse is an adjective meaning "same", by combining the two you get a gender specific emphasis for himself/herself/themselves, rather than depending just on the context of the sentence. (update: correction to use the right accented e for sé)
I agree. Italian is confusing in that 'se' is used for 'if', unlike French and Spanish where (in different positions) it indicates a reflexive verb. And 'si', which seems a more intuitive way to say 'if', or 'yes' (ignoring the accent), indicates a reflexive verb. But it's all grist to the mill of learning, I suppose.
346
Now I got it, this intro on the use of reflexives; however, the example should have some trailing clause like "in the mirror", "like a princes", etc. to have a full sense.