Question 1

Why use сам here instead of the reflexive pronoun себя?

Accepted Answer

Сам is an emphatic pronoun meaning "myself" (doing it personally, without someone else's help). You use себя when you are the direct object of an action (like "I accidentally hit myself"), but here сам simply emphasizes the subject who is doing the fixing.

Question 2

How do we know which form of the emphatic pronoun to use?

Accepted Answer

It must agree in gender and number with the noun or pronoun it refers to. Here it refers to Я. Because the verb хотел is in the masculine past tense, we know the speaker is male, so we use the masculine singular form сам. A female speaker would say Я хотела бы сама.

Question 3

Could сам be placed somewhere else in this sentence?

Accepted Answer

Yes, Russian word order is flexible. You will often see it right after the pronoun, like Я сам хотел бы.... Placing it right before the infinitive починить gives a slightly stronger emphasis to the fact that he wants to do the fixing personally.

Question 4

Why is the past tense verb хотел used when talking about a current desire?

Accepted Answer

The combination of any past tense verb and the particle бы creates the conditional mood in Russian. While я хотел simply means "I wanted", adding бы changes the meaning to "I would like".

Question 5

Why don't the endings of этот старый кран change, since it is the direct object being fixed?

Accepted Answer

It actually is in the accusative case, which is required for direct objects. However, for masculine inanimate nouns (objects that aren't people or animals), the accusative case looks exactly the same as the dictionary (nominative) form.

Я хотел бы сам починить этот старый кран.

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