Se me cayeron las llaves.I dropped my keys. Literally, the keys fell on me.

When something goes wrong unintentionally, Spanish often doesn't say "I did it". Instead it presents the event as something that happened to the person: the keys fell, the glass broke, the time ran out, and the person is shown by an indirect object pronoun. The speaker is shown as affected by the event rather than as its doer. This is the accidental se, and it is very common in everyday speech.

Quick shortcut: se + me / te / le / nos / os / les + verb in the third person, agreeing with the thing. Se me olvidó la cita. (I forgot the appointment.) Se me cayeron las llaves. (I dropped my keys.) The thing is the grammatical subject, and the person is the indirect object.

The pattern

The sentence has three parts: se, the indirect object pronoun showing who is affected, and a verb that agrees in number with the thing that happened:

Person affected Example
me Se me rompió el vaso. (I broke the glass. It broke on me.)
te Se te cayeron las llaves. (You dropped your keys.)
le Se le olvidó la cita. (He / she forgot the appointment.)
nos Se nos acabó el tiempo. (We ran out of time.)
os Se os perdieron las entradas. (You lost the tickets.)
les Se les averió el coche. (Their car broke down.)

Verbs that are often used this way are olvidar, caer, romper, perder, acabar, quemar, averiar, escapar, ocurrir. The most common tenses are the preterite (se me olvidó) for one event and the present or imperfect (se me olvidan los nombres, se me caían las cosas) for something that happens repeatedly.

The order is fixed: se me, never me se

Se always comes before the indirect object pronoun, and the two are not separated: Se me cayó el vaso. Compare double object pronouns, where se also comes first (se lo dije), though that se is a different one. To make clear or emphasise who is affected, add a + the person at the start, without dropping the pronoun: A Ana se le olvidó la cita. (Ana forgot the appointment.) A mí se me cayó el móvil. (I was the one who dropped my phone.)

The verb agrees with the thing, not with the person

The person is an indirect object, so the verb agrees with the thing that happened:

  • Se me cayó el vaso. (singular: el vaso)
  • Se me cayeron los vasos. (plural: los vasos)
  • Se me olvidó la contraseña. (singular: la contraseña)
  • Se me olvidaron las contraseñas. (plural: las contraseñas)

When what happens is an action (an infinitive) or a clause, the verb stays singular: Se me olvidó llamarte. (I forgot to call you.) Se te olvidó que hoy era festivo. (You forgot that today was a holiday.)

Framing and responsibility

The accidental se changes how the event is framed, and it doesn't by itself prove that nobody was to blame. Compare:

  • Rompí el vaso. (I broke the glass.) The speaker is the doer.
  • Se me rompió el vaso. (The glass broke on me.) It presents the break as something that happened to the speaker, and it can downplay their responsibility.

Olvidar also has a reflexive version: Me olvidé de las llaves (I forgot the keys) is neutral, while Se me olvidaron las llaves sounds more like an unintended slip. See reflexive verbs. This structure is related to gustar in that the thing is the subject and the person is the indirect object (see gustar).

Common mistakes

  • ❌ Me se cayó el vaso. → ✅ Se me cayó el vaso. (se always comes first.)
  • ❌ Se me olvidó las llaves. → ✅ Se me olvidaron las llaves. (the verb agrees with the thing, las llaves, which is plural.)
  • ❌ Se te olvidaron llamarme. → ✅ Se te olvidó llamarme. (before an infinitive, the verb stays singular.)

Quick check

  1. Complete: Se ___ (nosotros) acabó la leche.
  2. Complete: Se me ___ (caer) las gafas.
  3. Why is Se me olvidaron llamarte wrong?
  4. How would you say "The ball got lost on the kids" (it just went missing for them) with the accidental se?
  5. What is the difference between Rompí el móvil and Se me rompió el móvil?
Show answers
  1. nos: Se nos acabó la leche.
  2. cayeron: the verb agrees with las gafas, which is plural.
  3. The thing that happened is an action (llamarte), so the verb stays singular: Se me olvidó llamarte.
  4. A los niños se les perdió la pelota.
  5. Rompí el móvil presents the speaker as the doer. Se me rompió el móvil presents it as something that happened to the speaker, which can soften their responsibility.

Key takeaways

  • The accidental se presents an event as happening to a person rather than as something they did: Se me cayó el vaso.
  • The pattern is se + me / te / le / nos / os / les + a third-person verb, and the order se me never reverses.
  • The verb agrees with the thing that happened (Se me cayeron las llaves) and stays singular before an infinitive or a clause (Se me olvidó llamarte).
  • Add a + person to clarify or emphasise who is affected: A Ana se le olvidó la cita.
  • Compared with the active Rompí el vaso, Se me rompió el vaso plays down responsibility.