Breakdown of Мы инженеры, поэтому сами починили розетку.
мы
we
поэтому
so (therefore)
инженер
engineer
сам
oneself (emphatic: "I did it myself")
Questions & Answers about Мы инженеры, поэтому сами починили розетку.
Why do we use сами here instead of себя?
The pronoun сам (here in the plural сами) is used to mean 'personally' or 'by ourselves'. It emphasizes exactly who performed the action. On the other hand, себя is a reflexive pronoun used when the subject is also the object receiving the action (like 'we hurt ourselves'). Here, the engineers fixed the socket, not themselves.
Why is сами in the nominative case?
Even though the pronoun мы (we) is dropped in the second half of the sentence, сами still modifies that hidden subject. Because the subject of the sentence is in the nominative case, the emphatic pronoun сами must also take the nominative plural form.
Could I use the word самостоятельно instead of сами?
Yes, you could say поэтому самостоятельно починили розетку. Both mean you did the task without outside help. However, сами is shorter and much more common in everyday spoken Russian, while самостоятельно sounds a bit more formal, translating closer to 'independently'.
Why does the word for socket change to розетку here?
It is the direct object of the verb починили (fixed), so it must take the accusative case. The dictionary form is розетка (a feminine noun ending in -а), which changes its ending to -у in the accusative case.