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Showing posts from July, 2014

'Se', the Anti-Hero. Learning Spanish.

One day in the autumn of 1980, when I was living in Talavera de la Reina I spent a morning in Madrid. Keen to learn more Spanish, I browsed around a shop selling just about every text book you could think of.  Amongst this array of books, one caught my eye. It was a teeny tiny, skinny minny paperback which looked completely innocuous. However, as I flicked through the pages the contents were enough to make my skinny minny brain puzzled and perplexed. The only subject of the book was the Spanish word, ‘se’.  Can’t be that bad, can it?  I can hear you mutter. And you’d be correct. He’s just a wee word is this ‘se’.   But, gollee wollee, he certainly does change the meaning of sentences. He evolves and revolves, slipping and sliding just like any elusive anti-hero we all love to hate. Let’s look at some uses of ‘se’. El niƱo se llama Juan.     (The boy calls himself Juan.  The boy is called Juan.) Ella se llama Ana .   (She calls herself Ana. She’s called Ana.)