Olvidar - Olvidarse - Part 4

OK, let's see if we can put everything together from the previous posts. You can view all the other posts here.

Sticking with our examples, below is a compilation of all three ways to say "I forgot":

Did you go to the bank?
No, se me olvidó
No, me olvidé
No, (yo) olvidé

I forgot the keys
Se me olvidaron las llaves
Me olvidé las llaves
Olvidé las llaves

I forgot about him a long ago
Hace mucho que se me olvidó de él
Hace mucho que me olvidé de él
Lo olvidé hace mucho (tiempo)

I forgot to call you
Se me olvidó de llamarte
Me olvidé de llamarte
Olvidé llamarte

I forgot the book
Se me olvidó el libro
Me olvidé del libro
Olvidé el libro

I forgot to bring the keys
Se me olvidó  traer las llaves
Me olvidé de traer las llaves
Olvidé traer las llaves

I forgot to call you
Se me olvidó llamarte
Me olvidé de llamarte
Olvidé llamarte

Each of these sentences can be expressed three different ways, and all three translations convey the same meaning. So what's the difference, which one do we use? Well, it comes down to what many things in Spanish boil down to, regionalisms and personal preference. In other words, Spanish speakers from different parts of the world may prefer one option over the other.

The reality of it is, you'll hear all of these constructions at some point in time. You'll even find that a native speaker will use different constructions in different situations.

Hopefully this series of posts has been helpful, and will make things a little easier for you than it was for me.

¡Suerte!

***NOTE: There are 4 parts to this subject, and you can see them all by clicking here

Olividar - Olvidarse - Part 3

The time has come to take another step down the road of confessing our olvidadizos - forgetfulness.

If you haven't read part one or part two, you may want to take a look at them. You can read them in any order, so feel free to finish this post and then look at the others.

OK, now let's look at our example sentences again, but this time using olvidar.

Did you go to the bank? - No, olvidé.

Olvidé las llaves - I forgot the keys

Olvidé traer las llaves - I forgot to bring the keys

Lo olvidé hace mucho (tiempo) - I forgot about him a long ago

Olvidé llamarte - I forgot to call you

Olvidé el libro - I forgot the book

If you noticed, using olvidar is a tad bit easier than using olvidarse, because we don't have to worry about remembering whether or not to use that pesky "de". And conjugating olvidar is much simpler because it's not reflexive.

So now we have 3 different ways to say the same thing - I forgot [something] or I forgot [to do something].

In the next post, I'm going to place everything side-by-side, so we can have a nice cross reference.

¡Hasta la proxima!

***NOTE: There are 4 parts to this subject, and you can see them all by clicking here

Olvidarse - se me olvidó - Part two

Let's pick up where we left off, telling the world just how forgetful we are. In Spanish of course. An important skill, especially for an olvidón ( forgetful person) like myself.

In part one of this series, we looked at several examples and translated them using me olvidé, so let's continue to look at those, but this time let's see how we can say the same thing using se me olvidó. This is known as the passive voice, but we arent going to worry about that right now. For now all you need to know is that this another way to say "I forgot".

Now let's revisit our examples:

Did you go to the bank? - No, se me olvidó

I forgot the keys - Se me olvidaron las llaves

I forgot to bring the keys - Se me olvidó traer las llaves

I forgot about him a long ago - Hace mucho que se me olvidó de él

I forgot to call you - Se me olvidó llamarte

I forgot the book - Se me olvidó el libro

Not so bad eh? Grammar wise, there's a whole going on here. My advice? Don't worry about it for now. Take the examples and start using them. There's just two simple rules you need to know right now:

(1) To say you forgot something, use se me olvidó [object]

(2) To say you forgot to do something or about someone, use se me olvidó [forgotten action].

If you've read part one, these rules sound awfully familar.

Now, one thing we haven't talked about yet, is olvidar, the non-reflexive way of saying "I forgot". Well, we'll get to that in the next part of this series. We'll look at the same examples and translate them using olvidar.

¡Hasta la proxima!



***NOTE: There are 4 parts to this subject, and you can see them all by clicking here

Olvidar vs Olvidarse - Part One

Tarde o temprano (sooner or later), you're going to forget something. To make matters worse, you're going to have to fess up to it in Spanish.

You may already know there are (at least) two ways to confess your forgetfulness, both of which involve the verb olividarse.

It took me a long time to (more or less) get all this stuff straight. The simplest way to say you forgot something is...

Me olvidé - I forgot. Plain and simple isn't it?

There's also se me olvidó. So, which one do you use, and what's the difference?

My Spanish tutor tells me the differences are nothing more than geographical location and preference. Me olvidé (de) is used more in Central America while se me olvidó is used more in Mexico, South America, and Spain.

Today I'm only going to talk about me olvidé (de).

Here's some examples that will help you start confessing your forgetfulness.

Did you go to the bank? - No, me olvidé.

Me olvidé las llaves - I forgot the keys.

Me olvidé de traer las llaves - I forgot to bring the keys.

Hace mucho que me olvidé de él - I forgot about him a long ago.

Me olvidé de llamarte - I forgot to call you

Me olvidé del libro - I forgot the book.

You may have noticed some of the examples used "me olvidé" and some used "me olvidé de".
The way it's been explained to me, is that if you want to say you forgot to do something , you have to use "me olvidé (de)".

If you want to say you forgot something, you can say "me olvidé".

In a nutshell, that's it. If you're looking grammar explanations, forget it (¡olvídalo!), you'll have to look elsewhere for that.

Oh, antes de que se me olvide (before I forget), in my next post we'll continue this discussion, but focusing on se me olvidó, and then wrapping things up in third and final post, using the non-reflexive infinitive, olvidar.

***NOTE: There are 4 parts to this subject, and you can see them all by clicking here