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- Topic: Spanish >
- "Ella puede cambiar."
34 Comments
Hi FreddyRay, the reflexive "se" is hard for English speakers to understand. . Ella se puede cambiar la camisa = she can change her shirt. The act of her changing her shirt is a reflexive action, "se" is a bit abstract to explain in black and white therefore my best advice is to keep learning Spanish until you get the concept subconsciously. .
It's because the action she is doing retuns back to her, she is doing the action and it affects her back. e.g. She changes the shirt (of herself). -> Ella se cambia la camisa. She changes the shirt (of the baby) -> Ella cambia la camisa (del bebé). This is when you use "se" which, depending on the person who acts, changes to "me/te/se/nos..."etc.
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Without further context, wouldn't it be more likely to be "cambiarse"? I would expect some sort of object.
Edit: I've heard from a couple of sources that cambiar doesn't use the reflexive when it has this meaning, it's a bit of an exception compared to other verbs. Some additional confirmation from a native speaker would be nice though.
Thank you for that, Ignasi! I've been waiting to see something like this input for sometime now since tener que started coming up in the lesson. I've always used has/have to when I see "tener que" in the exercises but I've been curious to know how to express (be) able to, so, once again, ¡muchas gracias!
OHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH YESSSSS! A little bit of my past here. This sentence would have been SO useful years ago! My friends, my sister, and I always would play, "Spirit animals'. If someone hated their animal, sometimes we would let them change it. This sentence would be useful if I had had a Mexican friend back then. (I still don't but ya know)