An accusative reflexive verb carries a little pronoun from the series mă, te, se, ne, vă, se — the same forms you use for "me, you, him/her, us, you, them" as a direct object. With some verbs the clitic does real work ("I wash myself"). With a large and very common group, it does nothing you can translate at all: a se uita (to look) and a se duce (to go) describe nothing done to oneself, yet the clitic is grammatically obligatory. This page sorts the two kinds out, gives you a model paradigm, and warns against the trap of treating "reflexive" as if it meant "to oneself."
The accusative clitic series
| Person | Clitic | Stands for |
|---|---|---|
| eu (I) | mă | myself |
| tu (you) | te | yourself |
| el / ea (he/she) | se | himself / herself |
| noi (we) | ne | ourselves |
| voi (you pl.) | vă | yourselves |
| ei / ele (they) | se | themselves |
In the present tense the clitic sits directly before the verb, and nu (not) slips in front of the whole unit: mă spăl → nu mă spăl. A verb's dictionary entry shows this series with a se: a se spăla, a se uita, a se duce.
True reflexives: the action loops back
In a true reflexive, subject and object are the same person, and you can usually strip the clitic to recover a plain transitive verb with a different object.
| Reflexive | Meaning | Non-reflexive twin |
|---|---|---|
| a se spăla | to wash oneself | a spăla (to wash sth/sb) |
| a se îmbrăca | to get dressed | a îmbrăca (to dress sb) |
| a se bărbieri | to shave (oneself) | a bărbieri (to shave sb) |
| a se pieptăna | to comb one's hair | a pieptăna (to comb sb's hair) |
Mă spăl pe dinți de două ori pe zi.
I brush my teeth twice a day.
Te îmbraci prea subțire pentru frigul ăsta.
You're dressing too lightly for this cold.
Tata se bărbierește în fiecare dimineață.
Dad shaves every morning.
Here the clitic earns its place: îmbrac copilul = "I dress the child," but mă îmbrac = "I dress myself." This is exactly what English does with -self.
Lexical reflexives: form only, no "self" meaning
Now the family that trips up every English speaker. These verbs are reflexive in form — they require a clitic — but there is no reflexive meaning to find. There is no plain verb a uita meaning "to look" (the clitic-less a uita means "to forget"!); the verb simply is a se uita. You memorize the clitic as part of the word, the way you memorize that a French noun is masculine.
| Verb | Meaning | Note |
|---|---|---|
| a se uita | to look, to watch | ≠ a uita "to forget"! |
| a se duce | to go (colloquial) | everyday workhorse for "go" |
| a se odihni | to rest | no transitive twin |
| a se grăbi | to hurry | no transitive twin |
| a se naște | to be born | literally "to bear oneself" |
| a se plimba | to go for a walk | no transitive twin |
Mă uit la un film cu prietenii diseară.
I'm watching a movie with friends tonight.
Mă duc la magazin, vrei ceva?
I'm going to the shop, do you want anything?
Grăbește-te, deja ne așteaptă!
Hurry up, they're already waiting for us!
There is no logic to extract here. You cannot reason your way to the conclusion that "to look" or "to go" should be reflexive in Romanian — these are simply lexical facts, learned verb by verb.
Model paradigm: a se uita (to look)
Watch how the clitic tracks the subject through every person. The verb endings are ordinary Class I (-a) endings; only the clitic marks it as reflexive.
| Person | Form | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| eu | mă uit | I look |
| tu | te uiți | you look |
| el / ea | se uită | he / she looks |
| noi | ne uităm | we look |
| voi | vă uitați | you (pl.) look |
| ei / ele | se uită | they look |
Ne uităm la meci la mine acasă?
Shall we watch the match at my place?
De ce vă uitați așa la mine?
Why are you (all) looking at me like that?
Se uită pe telefon toată ziua.
He stares at his phone all day long.
How this differs from English
English uses -self only when it genuinely needs to mark a reflexive action, and it is optional in casual speech ("I'm washing up"). Romanian, by contrast, makes the clitic obligatory and uses it far more widely — including for a whole class of verbs (a se uita, a se duce, a se grăbi) that have nothing reflexive about their meaning. So the English speaker has two distinct errors to avoid: dropping the clitic where it is required, and assuming that a clitic always signals a "to oneself" meaning. Neither intuition holds. The clitic is part of the verb's identity.
Common Mistakes
❌ Uit la televizor.
Incorrect — without the clitic this means 'I forget at the television'; you need mă, and a se uita takes la.
✅ Mă uit la televizor.
I'm watching television.
❌ Duc la magazin.
Incorrect — a se duce is obligatorily reflexive; the clitic mă cannot be dropped.
✅ Mă duc la magazin.
I'm going to the shop.
❌ Se uit la mine.
Incorrect — the clitic must agree with the subject; for 'I' it is mă, not se.
✅ Mă uit la tine.
I look at you.
❌ Te grăbi, te rog!
Incorrect — this is an infinitive shape; the present 2sg is te grăbești, and as a command it's grăbește-te.
✅ Grăbește-te, te rog!
Hurry up, please!
❌ Mă uit televizor.
Incorrect — a se uita needs the preposition la before its target.
✅ Mă uit la televizor.
I'm watching TV.
Key Takeaways
- The accusative reflexive series is mă, te, se, ne, vă, se, sitting before the verb in the present; dictionary form is a se ….
- True reflexives (a se spăla, a se îmbrăca) loop the action onto the subject and have a plain transitive twin.
- Lexical reflexives (a se uita, a se duce, a se grăbi) are reflexive in form only — the clitic carries no meaning but is obligatory.
- Watch the minimal pair a uita (forget) vs a se uita (look) — only the clitic separates them.
Now practice Romanian
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Start learning Romanian→Related Topics
- Reflexive Verbs: An IntroductionA2 — How Romanian reflexive verbs work, the accusative and dative clitic series, and why so many verbs are obligatorily reflexive.
- Dative Reflexive VerbsB1 — The dative reflexive clitics îmi, îți, își, ne, vă, își — verbs like a-și aminti and a-și dori that act on one's own mind or in one's own interest.
- Positioning Reflexive CliticsB1 — Where the reflexive clitic sits across every tense and mood — pre-verbal, fused into the auxiliary, or hyphenated after the verb — and the fusion rules m-am, te-ai, s-a.
- Reciprocal Verbs (each other)B1 — How Romanian uses the plural reflexive clitics ne, vă, and se to express 'each other', and how to disambiguate from true reflexives.
- Transitive, Intransitive, and the ObjectB1 — How transitivity works in Romanian, the direct-object marker pe, clitic doubling, and verbs that govern the dative instead of the accusative.