The stressed reflexive pronoun sebe

You already know the little word se: Tuširam se (I shower), Češljaš se (you comb your hair). It means 'oneself', and it never changes for person: the same se serves ja, ti, on and mi. But se is a clitic — a short, unstressed word that has to hide in second position. So it cannot do three jobs: it cannot stand after a preposition, it cannot carry stress, and it cannot say 'to/for oneself'. For those jobs Serbian uses the full, stressed reflexive pronoun sebe.

The forms

sebe has case forms like any other pronoun, but it has no nominative (it can never be the subject) and no separate forms for person or number. Here is the whole set:

Notice two pairs of twins: the genitive and accusative are both sebe, and the dative and locative are both sebi. The preposition tells you which case it is. So really you have only three words to learn: sebe, sebi, sobom.

When you need the full form

1. After any preposition. A clitic can never follow a preposition, so it is always za sebe, o sebi, sa sobom, never za se. Uvek nosim kišobran sa sobom. (I always carry an umbrella with me.)
2. As the indirect object — 'for/to oneself'. se has no everyday dative, so buying or making something for yourself uses sebi: Kupila sam sebi novu kremu za lice.
3. When the reflexive is stressed or contrasted. Pogledala sam sebe u ogledalu puts weight on 'myself'; On misli samo na sebe — he thinks only of himself, not of others.
4. With sam for emphasis. sam ('alone, by oneself') agrees with the subject, while sebe/sebi/sobom stays the same: Sam sebi sam kriv (I only have myself to blame — a man speaking), Sama sebi je kriva (she only has herself to blame).

One form for every person

English changes the word: myself, yourself, himself, ourselves, themselves. Serbian does not. Whoever the subject is, the reflexive is sebe / sebi / sobom — the verb already tells you who it is.

The trap: when the object is the same person as the subject, do NOT use mene, meni, tebe, njega. Kupio sam meni knjigu is wrong — say Kupio sam sebi knjigu. Use meni, njemu only when the person is someone other than the subject: Kupio sam njemu knjigu means you bought it for another man.

se or sebe?

With an ordinary reflexive verb and no stress, keep the clitic: Svako jutro se tuširam i brijem. Switch to the full form only for the jobs above. Both can appear in one sentence: Ne ljuti se na sebe — the verb ljutiti se keeps its se, and after the preposition na comes sebe.

In casual speech you will also hear a short dative si (Kupi si nešto). It is colloquial; write sebi. And a bare se is not always 'oneself' — some verbs simply come with se, and a later lesson shows another use of it. The full form sebe is always truly reflexive.