Chapter 8

The verb poder and reflexive verbs

First off… If you want to say that you can do

something in English, the verb “can” is typically followed by another verb. This is the same in Spanish. Let’s look at a couple of examples.

Here they are…I can walk to school.

Yo puedo caminar a escuela.

You can go out tonight.

Tú puedes salir esta noche.

They can eat fruit this morning.

Pueden comer fruta esta mañana.

Something to noticeIn the previous slide, I put in bold the

Spanish infinitives that followed the “can” verb within the sentence. They always follow the conjugated form of “poder” in their infinitive forms.

The forms of poderThey are slightly irregular in that the “o” in

the root of the word changes to “ue” in all but one of the forms. We call these kinds of verbs “boot verbs.”

“poder” - “to be able to, to can” puedopodemos puedes puedepueden

The forms of salir“salir,” which mean “to leave,” or “to go

out,” has the following forms:

salgo salimos

sales

sale salen

Reflexive Verbs In English, we have reflexive verbs, but

they are constructed differently. Here are some examples of sentences with reflexive verbs.

In the morning, I dress myself.

The boy walks himself to school.

In Spanish……there are a lot more verbs that are

reflexive. Here is a list from chapter 8 that we will use:

ponerse lavarse bañarse peinarse cepillarse prepararse ducharse secarse

How are they used?Well, let’s try one at a time:

bañarse (to take a bath)

The “se” at the end of each reflexive verb comes off the end of the verb, and then goes in front of it. Here are the forms:

me baño (I bathe myself) nos bañamos (We bathe ourselves)

te bañas (You bathe yourself)

se baña (he/she bathes him/herself) se bañan (They/you guys bathe

themselves/yourselves)

Here are the meanings of the others

ponerse - to put on, to wear

cepillarse - to brush (one’s hair/teeth)

ducharse - to shower

lavarse - to wash (one’s hands/hair/face)

peinarse - to come one’s hair

prepararse - to get ready

secarse - to dry off

IMPORTANT!!You must always have me, te, se, or nos

in front of each of these verbs! These are reflexive verbs, and as such require a reflexive pronoun before the verb.

That’s it…As always, if you don’t understand

something, ask! Or email me at hahn.mark@ccsd59.org. The information for this presentation came from pages 212-214 in your textbook.