Chinese In
Mandarin Chinese, the reflexive pronoun is , meaning "self". The antecedent it refers to can be inferred by context, which is generally the subject of the sentence: • 。(Take care of
(your)self.) • 。(
I'll take care of
(my)self.) The antecedent can be reiterated before the reflexive pronoun; this can be used to refer to an antecedent that's not the subject: • 。(I gave him
his own book.) • 。(I gave him
my own book.) Like English, the reflexive can also be used to emphasize the antecedent: This was also the case in
Classical Chinese, which simply used (
Old Chinese: *
kəʔ).
Danish Danish uses the separate reflexive pronoun
sig for third person pronouns, and 'selv' to mark intensive. • (
I protect myself) In Danish, there is also a difference between normal and reflexive genitives, the latter being used only in the singular: • (Anna gave Maria her [''Maria's, or possibly some unknown third person's''] book.) • (Anna gave Maria her [''Anna's''] book.) In the latter case,
sin is a case of a
reflexive possessive pronoun, i.e. it reflects that the subject in the phrase (Anna) owns the object (the book).
Esperanto The
Esperanto third-person reflexive pronoun is , or for the possessive (to which can be added
-j for plural agreement and
-n for direct object). • (''He reads his (someone else's) books.'') • (
He reads his (own) books.)
French In
French, the main reflexive pronoun is , with its
indefinite form . There are also intensifying reflexive pronouns, such as , , , , and , similar in meaning (but not often used) to myself, yourself, etc. French also uses reflexive verbs to express actions that somebody is doing to themselves. Many of these are related to daily routine. For example, • (I get washed, lit "I wash myself")
German In
German, the reflexive case is not distinguishable from the accusative and dative cases except in the third person reflexive. As discussed above, the reflexive case is most useful when handling third person because it is not always clear that pronouns refer to the same person, whereas in the first and second persons, it is clear:
he hit him and
he hit himself have different meanings, but
I hit me and
I hit myself mean the same thing although the former is nonstandard English. Because the accusative and dative cases are different, the speaker must know whether the verb is reflexive accusative or reflexive dative. There are very few reflexive dative verbs, which must be memorised to ensure that the correct grammar is used. The most notable one is (to hurt oneself): (I hurt myself.) See also
German pronouns. The genetive form of the reflexive pronoun is effectively lost as it has drifted in meaning to mean specifically 'his'.
Hindi/Urdu In
Hindi, there are two primary reflexive pronouns, the reflexive pronoun () [from PIE ] meaning "self" and pronoun () [from
PII "self"] which is the possessive reflexive pronoun and both these pronouns are used with all the three, 1st, 2nd, and 3rd, persons. There is also the pronoun () which is used with either the
inessive case-marker () forming the reflexive pronoun () meaning "among ourselves" or the genitive postpostion () forming the reflexing pronoun () meaning "of ourselves". The genitive reflexive pronoun can also be used to emphasise when used with the personal genitive pronouns, so e.g. () "mine" becomes () "my very own". When used to indicate that the person is the direct object of the verb, one uses the
accusative form, . (It does not have a nominative form.) • . . ("He has wounded himself.") Emphasized forms are "sam sebya" - masculine, "sama sebya" - feminine, "sami sebya" - plural. Unless there is a particular reason (emphasis, answering a question) the word "sam" usually comes after the noun it is emphasizing. • . . ("
He has wounded himself." Literally: "He himself has wounded himself.") However the form, e.g., , is grammatical as well. This sentence underlines that the subject inflicted the wounds while in the previous example, "sebya" merely indicates that the subject was wounded. The reflexive pronoun gave rise the reflexive affix () used to generate
reflexive verbs, but in this context the affix indicates that the action happened accidentally: • (He has wounded himself.) There are stylistic differences between the three usages, despite being rendered in the same way in English. Russian has a reflexive possessive as well. • (
He loves his wife (his own). - Reflexive possessive) • (''He loves his wife (someone else's).'' - It is ambiguous in English, but less so in Russian.) Because of the existence of reflexive forms, the use of a non-reflexive pronoun indicates a subject that is different from the object. If it is impossible, the sentence is invalid or at least irregular: • . . ("He has wounded him (someone else).")
Serbo-Croatian Serbo-Croatian uses the reflexive pronoun , which is the same for all persons, numbers and genders, and declined as follows: • ("Ana gave
her [Maria's] book to Maria.") • ("Ana gave
her [Ana's] book to Maria.") The words that modify the reflexive pronoun do show gender and number:
myself - + => (); to
myself - + => (); from
myself - + => ();
yourself - + => (); to
yourself - + => (); from
yourself - + => ();
himself/
herself/
itself - + => (); to
himself/
herself/
itself- + => (); from
himself/
herself/
itself- + => ();
ourselves - + => (); to
ourselves- + => (); from
ourselves - + => ();
yourselves - + => (); to
yourselves - + => (); from
yourselves - + => ();
themselves - + => (); to
themselves- + => (); from
themselves- + => ();
Emphatic-pronoun use:
myself - + => ()
yourself - + => ()
himself/
herself/
itself - + => ()
ourselves - + => ()
yourselves - + => ()
themselves - + => () Basically, the suffixes change based on the preposition used: ==See also==