German Reflexive Verbs: sich, mich, mir and When to Use Each

A German reflexive verb is a verb that brings its own pronoun along, and that pronoun points straight back at the subject.

English has reflexives too - I hurt myself, she taught herself - but it only reaches for them when it has to. German uses them all the time, including for plenty of everyday ideas where English has a single plain verb: to sit down, to remember, to hurry, to be pleased. That is the whole difficulty. The grammar is small; the habit of adding a word English never taught you to expect is what takes practice.

What sich actually does

Compare two sentences:

Ich setze das Kind auf das Bett. - I sit the child on the bed.

Ich setze mich. - I sit down.

The verb is the same, setzen, which means to put something into a sitting position. In the first sentence the thing being put is the child. In the second, it is me, so the object slot is filled by mich. German will not let that slot stay empty: Ich setze on its own is an unfinished sentence, the way I put is in English.

That is the key to the whole topic. A reflexive verb is not a special class of verb with mysterious extra rules. It is an ordinary verb whose object happens to be the same person as its subject. English quietly swallows that object in sit down, hurry up, get changed. German writes it down.

The reflexive pronouns

The reflexive pronouns are the ordinary object pronouns you already know from the German cases, with a single substitution:

The substitution is sich. Wherever an ordinary object pronoun would be him, her, it, them or the formal you, the reflexive version collapses to sich. That is also the one place a reflexive differs in meaning from a plain pronoun:

Er sieht sich. - He sees himself.

Er sieht ihn. - He sees him (someone else).

Notice too that the accusative and dative columns are identical everywhere except the first two rows. The choice between cases, which sounds like a big new topic, only ever changes one word: mich or mir, dich or dir.

And a spelling point that trips up a remarkable number of learners: sich is never capitalised mid-sentence, even when it belongs to formal Sie. Setzen Sie sich bitte. Capital on the pronoun, lower case on the reflexive.

Twenty reflexive verbs worth knowing

These are the reflexive verbs a beginner meets first, most of them among the first thousand words of German. Many come with a fixed preposition, and that preposition is part of the verb: learn sich freuen auf, not sich freuen plus a guess.

Look down the meaning column and count how many English equivalents contain oneself. Two. Everywhere else English has a verb that is reflexive in meaning but not in form, and that gap is exactly where English speakers drop the pronoun.

Accusative or dative: mich or mir

The rule is short enough to fit on a single line: the reflexive pronoun is accusative unless the sentence already has a direct object, in which case it moves to the dative.

Ich wünsche mir ein Auto. - I wish for a car (literally: I wish myself a car).

Ich kaufe mir ein Buch. - I am buying myself a book.

Das kann ich mir nicht leisten. - I cannot afford that.

In each of these the accusative slot is taken - by ein Auto, ein Buch, das - so the reflexive pronoun takes the dative, the case for the person something is done for. It is the same logic as Ich gebe dem Kind ein Buch: one thing given, one person it goes to.

Because the two forms are only different for ich and du, most of the time you cannot get this wrong. Er kauft sich ein Buch and Er freut sich use the same pronoun. The mistake only shows up in the first and second person singular, which is unfortunately where you do most of your talking.

The verb that changes meaning with the case

sich vorstellen is the best argument for taking the case seriously, because the same verb means two different things:

Darf ich mich vorstellen? - May I introduce myself? (accusative)

Ich kann mir das vorstellen. - I can imagine that. (dative)

Introducing yourself puts you in front of other people; imagining something puts a picture in front of you. The dative mir is the person the picture is shown to. Get the pronoun wrong and you offer to imagine yourself, which a German listener will understand but will also notice.

Where the pronoun goes

In a plain main clause the reflexive pronoun sits straight after the conjugated verb:

Ich freue mich sehr. - I am very pleased.

When something else takes first position and the subject moves behind the verb, a pronoun subject comes first and the reflexive follows it:

Heute fühle ich mich besser. - Today I feel better.

With a noun subject, German usually tucks the short pronoun in front of the noun instead:

Morgen trifft sich die Familie. - The family is meeting tomorrow.

Put a modal or another helper verb in the sentence and the reflexive stays up front with the conjugated verb while the infinitive goes to the end, exactly as in the German modal verbs: Wir müssen uns beeilen. And after weil or dass, the conjugated verb goes last but the pronoun stays early: ..., weil ich mich auf den Abend freue.

In a command, the pronoun follows the verb: Setz dich! (sit down, to one person), Beeil dich! (hurry up), Setzen Sie sich! (formal).

Each other: the reciprocal use

In the plural, the same pronouns also mean each other:

Wir treffen uns morgen. - We are meeting (each other) tomorrow.

Sie lieben sich. - They love each other.

Context almost always makes it clear whether sich means themselves or each other. When it does not, German has einander for the reciprocal meaning, but in speech you will hear uns and sich doing the job far more often.

The perfect tense: always haben

Every reflexive verb forms its perfect with haben, without exception, because the pronoun is an object and a verb with an object takes haben:

Ich habe mich gefreut. - I was pleased.

Wir haben uns getroffen. - We met.

Er hat sich entschieden. - He has made up his mind.

That includes verbs of movement that would take sein on their own. The pronoun is the tiebreaker, and it always breaks towards haben.

Same verb, with and without sich

Several common verbs exist in both forms, and the reflexive changes what they mean:

Ich ändere den Plan means I change the plan; Der Plan ändert sich means the plan changes, with nobody doing it. English uses one verb for both and lets context decide. German makes the distinction visible, and once you notice it the reflexive stops looking decorative and starts looking precise.

Mistakes English speakers make

• Dropping the pronoun. Ich freue and Ich erinnere are not sentences. If English has no myself, you will be tempted to leave it out; German still needs it.
• Using selbst instead. selbst means myself in the sense of personally, as in I did it myself. It does not make a verb reflexive. Ich fühle selbst gut is wrong; Ich fühle mich gut is right.
• Making a verb reflexive because English is. English enjoy yourself does not mean German needs a reflexive, and German sich freuen does not mean English needs one. Learn each verb with its pronoun, or without it, as a unit.
• mich where mir belongs. Ich kaufe mich ein Buch is the classic slip. If there is already a thing being bought, wished for or imagined, the pronoun is dative.
• Capital S on sich. Only Sie gets the capital.
• The wrong preposition. sich freuen auf looks forward; sich freuen über is pleased about something that has already happened or is happening now. Swap them and you are delighted in advance about last week.

What to do next

Learn five verbs as full phrases, pronoun and preposition included: sich freuen auf, sich fühlen, sich setzen, sich erinnern an and sich interessieren für. Say each one aloud with ich, du and wir until mich, dich and uns arrive without thinking. Then add mir through the one pattern that needs it, Ich kaufe mir ..., and the case question is essentially solved. The German course drills these verbs in context, which is where the pronoun finally stops feeling optional.