Para todos los estudiants de español - ¡FELIZ AÑO NUEVO! Today, I'm going to review a quick way of expressing accidents. In Spanish, there is a way to express that you did something (lost something, broke something, etc.) by accident without having to actually say "on accident." In fact, you basically blame the item that you broke or lost! Nice!!! So, instead of "I lost my wallet!"... you pretty much can say "The wallet lost me!" ... and it's understood that you're saying you lost your wallet accidentally. Here is how you do it...
Let's say you broke a chair... and you want to express to the owner of the chair that you broke it.. well, in this difficult time... you can just tell them in a straightforward manner:
Yo rompí la silla. ¡LO SIENTO!
(I broke the chair. I'M SORRY!)
This uses very basic and literal but correct Spanish. The I'm sorry part expresses that it was an accident... but the first sentence does not. It simply says that you broke the chair. However, if you want to make it clear that it was an accident... you use the following combination:
se + (me, te, le, nos, or les) + verb + subject (i. e. the chair)
So, let's break that down. The first word used is 'se'. This is going to be part of the verb (romper), which is now going to be connected not the person who accidentally broke the chair, but to the broken or lost item itself (the chair, in this case). In other words, the chair is doing the breaking... it wasn't your fault!! It was that rickety old chair!
The second word is now the indirect object (the subject in the previous example).. this is the person who accidentally breaks the chair. In our example, it is going to the first person, so we will use 'me'.
The third word is the verb, which is romper. In the straightforward example, we conjugated it to say "rompí" (I broke). In this case, since the verb will be connected to the chair - we will conjugate it in the third person and say "rompió" (it broke).
Finally, we have what was originally the direct object (the chair)... but now since we are blaming the unfortunate accident on the chair, it becomes the subject. That's why romper is rompió instead of rompí. So here's the new sentence:
Se me rompió la silla.
(Meaning: I broke the chair [on accident].)
Remember, the verb must agree with the subject, which is not the thing being broken (or lost, or whatever...). So, if you broke all the chairs, you would say:
Se me rompieron las sillas.
(Meaning: I broke the chairs [on accident].)
What if you want to say "(He) lost the keys" using this construction???
We start with se:
Se
Then we use the indirect object pronoun (me, te, le, nos or les)... in this case, 'he' is the one accidentally messing stuff up. So, that would be the third person singular "le"... so we have...
Se le
Next is the verb... it will connect to the subject, which is going to be the keys (since the keys are the ones doing the action - as far as we're concerned anyway). Thus...
Se le perdieron
And finally, the subject... which is the keys.
Se le perdieron las llaves.
So, aside from giving several examples, that pretty much explains the basic concept. There is one extra thing to know, however. If you want to mention the person or persons directly (for example, The Americans broke the machine), you must put an 'a' before the person or persons (because they are the indirect object). So, we would say...
A los Americanos se les rompió la máquina.
Here are several examples of this concept in action:
- Se me quemó el pan. (I burned the bread on accident.)
- Se nos perdieron las llaves. (We lost the keys on accident.)
- A Juan se le rompió la television. (Juan broke the TV on accident.)
- A los perros se les rompió la ventana. (The dogs broke the window on accident.)
- Se me cortó el dedo. (I cut my finger on accident.)
- Se nos perdieron los boletos. (We lost the tickets on accident.)
Of course, don't forget - if it is done on purpose, you can use the straightforward, literal way of saying it:
Ellos rompieron la máquina.
