Tú debes hacer lo que se te dice.

Sentence Discussions Spanish
#1
German Translation

Du musst tun, was man dir gesagt hat.

Why is “se” necessary here?

Update: My problem was that I hadn’t learned the passive yet. “Se” is one of the two ways in Spanish to express the passive voice. Arguably, it’s the only common way in spoken/everyday language. The other way is used mostly/only in writing (newspapers, government authorities, et cetera).

Literally, “se” is a reflexive pronoun with which 1) something can refer to itself, 2) someone can refer to herself/himself, and so on.

So the literal translation of this sentence would sound something like this (I think):

“You need to do that which says itself to you.”

Not taken literally, this construct is used to convey the passive voice:

“You need to do that which is said to you.”

This construct is called pasiva refleja.

Este agua no se debe tomar.
El problema es que el niño nunca hace lo que se le dice.
#2

According to wiktionary, meaning #2: se - Wiktionary, the free dictionary
it’s used “to convey the meaning of the English passive voice”, or, if you’re coming from German, it corresponds to the “man” in the German sentence.
I.e. “se dice” = “man sagt”.

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#4

Yes exactly.
But this is just the equivalent meaning. “se” is still a reflexive pronoun literally, and you can notice that in how it depends on singular vs. plural:
productos que se exportan - products that are exported
el producto que se exporta - the product that is exported

So, if you try to translate this as “the products that they export”, you notice that it does not work like that, because the verb does not agree with “they” but with “the product(s)”. So it’s literally more like “the products that export themselves”.

In a way, we also have a similar construct in German:

Die Würstchen verkaufen sich gut.

Which is similar in effect to a passive construct.

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#5

Thanks so much! That clarified a lot and/or pointed me in the right direction.

My problem is I never had a grammar lesson, (with the green owl site being a shadow of its former self) I plunged right into the vocabulary with Clozemaster, so I hadn’t yet heard how the passive voice is formed.

With your help and pointers, I read up some articles on the passive voice and have a much better understanding now. :slight_smile: Thank you.

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#6

This is the “impersonal se”, right? Which uses the word “one” as in “One does not simply walk into Mordor.”

From English to Spanish to German:

  • One sleeps better with a clear conscience.
  • Se duerme mejor con la conciencia tranquila.
  • Es schläft sich besser mit reinem Gewissen.
  • One lives good in Merida.
  • Se vive a gusto en Mérida.
  • Es lebt sich gut in Merida.
  • One eats well at the beach.
  • Se come bien en la playa.
  • Es isst sich gut am Strand.

Notice that with the “impersonal se”, there’s never a specific noun doing the action. More precisely: Such a sentence must never have a subject. It’s left unspecified who exactly it is that sleeps/lives/eats. Conversely, if there’s a subject (e.g., a noun doing the action), it can’t be the “impersonal se”.

For the German sentences, I intentionally avoided to write “Man schläft/lebt/isst” to drive home the point, lest “man” gets misconstrued as the subject of the sentence (“Who or what eats well at the beach?” – “Man.”). There is no subject in the Spanish sentence and I wanted the German sentences to reflect that as good as possible. For the English sentences, I think you can’t get any closer than with “One sleeps/lives/eats”.

How do you know if the sentence has a subject? Try this procedure: Take any sentence in the active voice. For example, “John eats the food,” or in Spanish, “John come la comida.” John is the subject and la comida is the direct object of the sentence. If you now replace the subject (John) with “se”, you change the sentence from active voice into either passive voice or an impersonal sentence, depending on how the rest of the sentence will end up looking. Doing this to our example would result in “Se come la comida.” (The food is eaten.) By doing that, what was the subject in the old sentence, disappears, and—provided the sentence in the active voice had a (direct) object—what was the (direct) object becomes the new subject. If that new sentence has a subject, it cannot be an impersonal sentence. In that case, the new sentence must be in the passive voice, since that is the only option left after ruling out the “impersonal se”. Since the old exemplary sentence (active voice) had a direct object (la comida), the new sentence has a subject, which means we can rule out the “impersonal se” for our example. The new sentence must therefore be in the passive voice, and translates to the (already spoilered) “The food is eaten.”

If we instead look at the active voice sentence “John eats well at the beach,” and again replace the subject (John) with “se”, the subject disappears as with the other example. But this time, since the active voice sentence didn’t have a direct object, which would turn into the new subject by this substitution, the new sentence is left without a subject. Due to the lack of a subject, we know that the new sentence, “Se come bien en la playa,” is an impersonal sentence.

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Este agua no se debe tomar.
#7

Don’t forget that the type of the direct object (of the active sentence) matters.
If it’s a person, the sentence does become an impersonal sentence if you turn it into a “se” construction, even though there was a direct object.

Look here: Passiv in der spanischen Grammatik

Quote:

Wenn das direkte Objekt des Verbs im Aktiv eine Person ist, muss dieses mit der Präposition a angeschlossen werden. In diesem Fall handelt es sich um eine Konstruktion mit unpersönlichem se (impersonal refleja) und nicht um Pasiva refleja. Die Präposition verhindert, dass das nominale Satzglied als Subjekt fungiert – und deshalb muss dieses nicht zwangsläufig in der Zahl mit dem Verb übereinstimmen. Denn das Verb steht (durch das fehlende Bezugswort) ausschließlich im Singular.

Beispiel:

La policía ha contactado a los testigos. → Aktiv

Los testigos han sido contactados. → Passiv

Se ha contactado a los testigos. (nicht: Se han contactado a los testigos) → unpersönliches se

A bit further up the article also says that the passive subject not being a person is a requirement for the “pasiva refleja”.

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#8

You’re right.

In the passive voice, the subject must never be a person (one or many, doesn’t matter).

So, if—in the active voice—the direct object is a person, two things would happen:

  • The direct object would become the subject by introducing “se”, resulting in the passive voice, not an impersonal sentence. This has nothing to do yet with the direct object being a person. Only with there being a direct object (regardless of what it represents).
  • But: A person would become the subject of the passive voice sentence. And this is never allowed.

If in the active voice sentence the direct object is a person, we need to prevent it from becoming the subject when “se” is introduced. This is what the word “a” does. It prevents the object turning into the subject, leaving the new sentence without a subject, and thus making the new sentence an impersonal sentence rather than a passive voice sentence.

An example is this sentence:

I think, though, the discussion about the word “a” should be continued in another topic as understanding it is not necessary to understand the sentence at hand.

@pitti42 The links you provided were crucial for my understanding of all this, so thank you once again! :slight_smile:

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