si (himself/herself/itself//themselves).You probably recognise these verb endings from other Italian conjugations you have practiced.

I'll use svegliarsi as our example again. I’ll start you off with an example in the present tense ( presente). Let’s practice conjugating Italian reflexive verbs, in other words, putting them into the right forms according to verb tenses or person. Italian reflexive verbs are important because you need them to be able to esprimerti (express yourself) fluently. You can recognise Italian reflexive verbs in the infinitive form because they end in “si.” Italian is cool because it has its own verb form for cases like this, which makes it less wordy than it is in English! Let’s look at svegliarsi and say that the subject (person doing the action) is “me.” What Are Italian Reflexive Verbs And Why Are They Important?Īn Italian reflexive verb ( verbo reflessivo) is a verb where the subject is carrying out the action on itself. Click here to find out more and try out the method for free. Reflexive verbs are pretty easy once you siediti (sit yourself down) and spend some time figuring them out!īy the way, if you want to learn Italian through stories, not rules, my top recommendation for language learners is my Uncovered courses, which teach you through StoryLearning®. Some Italian learners are a little intimidated by them at first, because these words don’t function the same way that they do in English.īut don’t be alarmed. In just that simple explanation of your morning, you would need to use six Italian reflexive verbs:Īs you can see, reflexive verbs are one key to speaking Italian fluently and confidently. Now, imagine that the hotel is in Italy, so this conversation is happening in Italian. When I finally pulled myself out of bed, I sat down in front of the mirror to comb my hair. I was tired! I almost fell back asleep again. “Well, I woke up at 7:30 when my alarm went off. They don’t just want to know, “My morning has been fine so far.” They really want to hear all about it.

Picture this: You’re eating breakfast in a hotel lobby and someone asks you how your day has been so far. When you learn Italian, you need to get your head round some grammar structures that don't have simple equivalents in English, like reflexive verbs in Italian.

What is a reflexive verb