Intensive and Reflexive Pronouns

The word itself is an intensive pronoun and it is used to add emphasis to (or intensify) the word it. The intensive pronoun that goes with I is myself, so the correct sentence is "I myself don’t know." This is a little different from just saying "I don't know." By adding emphasis to I, what you are saying is, "I don't know, but maybe someone who is not me does know." Below are some sentences using intensive pronouns.

• I myself am planning to go to the party, but I don't know if my sister is.
• If you finish the project for her, she herself will never learn.
• The teacher himself hoped to learn something from the guest speaker.

Itself and myself are also used as reflexive pronouns. A reflexive pronoun is used when the person receiving the action of a verb (the object of the sentence) is the same person doing the action (the subject of the sentence). For example, if I cook a meal, and the person eating the meal is also me, we would say "I cooked a meal for myself" or "I cooked myself a meal." Below are some sentences using reflexive pronouns.

• I gave myself a pat on the back for a job well done. [=I am the person I patted on the back]
• We told ourselves that everything would be ok.
• She wanted to teach herself how to play the piano.

Below is a table of pronouns and the intensive or reflexive pronouns to use with them:

You can recognize intensive and reflexive pronouns because they all end in -self or -selves. The important thing to remember when using intensive or reflexive pronouns is that the person or thing they refer to is the same person or thing already mentioned.

I hope this helps.