German A2 - Reflexive Verbs with Dative Pronouns

This lesson is the follow-up to the handout, “Introduction to Reflexive Verbs”. In that lesson, the basic principles of reflexive verbs are explained, with a specific focus on verbs with accusative pronouns. This handout goes a step further and introduces students to reflexive verbs with dative pronouns (‘mir’, ‘dir’, ‘sich’, ‘uns’, ‘euch’), highlighting the critical differences between the two types.

Although these differences are fairly easy to grasp (“Ich wasche mich.” / “Ich wasche mir die Hände.”), there are many additional nuances of dative reflexives that students can learn in their quest towards fluency. This lesson might be especially helpful to those making the jump from A2 to B1 and can serve as review notes to this end.

Approximately 15 reflexive verbs with dative pronouns are chosen for this lesson, with over 50 sample sentences included. The majority are color-coded, clearly marking subject, direct object and indirect object in the sentence. A handy summary is included on page 8 of the handout. As a prerequisite, students should already be familiar with the basics of how reflexive verbs work and should also know the dative-case articles.