French Reflective Verbs For Beginners

What Is A Reflective Verb?

A reflective verbs show us that someone is doing an action on to themselves, it reflects back on to them.

These are usually verbs around self care that point towards you body and clothing and generally anything you do upon yourself like this. 

When you see a verb that is reflective and in its basic dictionary state (the infinitive form) it will have a ‘Se’ before it.

A verb like “to wash” is reflective, as you can wash yourself.

You would see this as “se lave” in the infinitive form, it basically means “himself wash”

If you see a verb like this, you can tell it is something you can do to yourself.

Do We Have Reflective Verbs In English?

In English we have this, but not in the same way as French.

In English we just use the verb and a pronoun. We can say “I washed” and we instantly know we are referring to ourselves.

If we were not referring to yourself, we would carry the sentence on and say who or what we where washing “I washed…the car”.

What Is A Reflective Verb In French?

In French, you need to always make it very clear who was doing the action, even if it is yourself.

You basically need to say “I washed myself”

You do this by adding a special pronoun. This goes after the subject pronoun you would normally use and before the verb.

The verb endings stay the same as they would normally for each subject pronoun.

 If it helps, imagine this extra pronoun means “myself”, “yourself” “himself” etc.

The Reflective Pronouns:

Je	Me (m’)
Te	Te (t’)
Il/elle	Se (s’)
Nous	Nous
Vous	Vous
Ils/Elles	Se (s’)

To say “I wash” you would just say “Je me lave” It really is that simple.

You will see some of the reflective pronouns have been shorted like m’ this is when the verb after it starts with a vowel.

You might have already seen this already with “Je m’appelle” which means “I am called” but if you actually translate it, it’s more “I myself call” or “I call myself”.

You will also see that the nous and vous are the same word for both pronouns. Yes, it looks strange, but this is just how it is.

Nous nous lavons – We wash ourselves

Vous vous lavez – You are washing yourselves

Do You Need Reflective Pronouns In French?

For the longest time I could not grasp this concept at all.

If you say “Je lave…” it means “I wash” so when someone asks what I do when I wake up… why can’t I just say “Je lave”?

You can say this …but it’s wrong. If you are washing yourself, you always need to state that in French. It is not like in English where it is implied.

You have to say “Je me lave” so we know you are washing yourself.

You can say “Je lave…” But it needs to be followed by something else that you are washing “Je lave mon chien – I wash my dog”.

There is just no “je lave – I wash” on its own. Its either “I wash myself” or “I wash something”.

I don’t know why it took me so long to accept this, but hopefully I’ve made it clearer for you so you don’t get hung up with this too. 

Negation and Reflective Verbs

To make the negative version of the sentence you simply use Ne… pas like you would normally, but the reflective pronoun is also put in between the two negation words along with the verb.

I wash myself – je me lave

I don’t wash myself – je ne me lave pas

If there is more than one verb, you will only put the ne..  pas around the first verb. 

I want to wash myself  – Je veux me laver

Becomes

I don’t want to wash myself – je ne veux pas me laver

Think about how it would be done in English. You would turn the “want” part into the negative so it becomes “don’t want” and it is the same here. The verb you are doing/ not doing to yourself doesn’t need to change.

How To Use French Reflective Verbs In Different Tenses

When using a reflective verb in any other tense in French it is usually the exact same as how you would use any other verb in that tense. You just add the reflective pronoun, exactly like how I have shown above in the present tense.

The only acceptation is the passé compose. Most verbs in this tense use Avoir as their auxillary (helping) verb. However, pretty much all of the reflective verbs use Etre as their helping verb.

 You can see here that this sentence uses Avoir. 

“I washed my dog – J’ai lavé mon chien”

But when we change it to talk about our self (making it reflective) it uses etre

“I washed myself – je me suis lave”

In the passé compose you can see the reflective pronoun comes before the helper verb (etre) – je me suis lave.

This is important and this is how the reflective is formed in this tense.

If you want to make it negative, you wrap the ne..pas around the  reflective pronoun and etre

je ne me suis pas lave –  I did not wash myself

Conclusion

Reflective verbs can seem a little confusing, but you will quickly see that they are straight forward. Just make sure to add the right reflective pronoun with your subject and your verb and you can’t go wrong.  

(Read the next lesson – Asking Questions In French)