Olvidarse - se me olvidó - Part two

Let's pick up where we left off, telling the world just how forgetful we are. In Spanish of course. An important skill, especially for an olvidón ( forgetful person) like myself.

In part one of this series, we looked at several examples and translated them using me olvidé, so let's continue to look at those, but this time let's see how we can say the same thing using se me olvidó. This is known as the passive voice, but we arent going to worry about that right now. For now all you need to know is that this another way to say "I forgot".

Now let's revisit our examples:

Did you go to the bank? - No, se me olvidó

I forgot the keys - Se me olvidaron las llaves

I forgot to bring the keys - Se me olvidó traer las llaves

I forgot about him a long ago - Hace mucho que se me olvidó de él

I forgot to call you - Se me olvidó llamarte

I forgot the book - Se me olvidó el libro

Not so bad eh? Grammar wise, there's a whole going on here. My advice? Don't worry about it for now. Take the examples and start using them. There's just two simple rules you need to know right now:

(1) To say you forgot something, use se me olvidó [object]

(2) To say you forgot to do something or about someone, use se me olvidó [forgotten action].

If you've read part one, these rules sound awfully familar.

Now, one thing we haven't talked about yet, is olvidar, the non-reflexive way of saying "I forgot". Well, we'll get to that in the next part of this series. We'll look at the same examples and translate them using olvidar.

¡Hasta la proxima!



***NOTE: There are 4 parts to this subject, and you can see them all by clicking here