is it wrong to say something like "it makes you feel yourself intelligent"?
feel yourself intelligent
I've never heard anything like that. Just "It makes you feel intelligent".
"Feel yourself" sounds a bit odd in this context as it literally means that you are touching yourself. Of course, you can do it in an intelligent way, too, but I reckon what you think of is rather "It makes you feel intelligent". :-)
"it makes you feel yourself intelligent"? sounds like a German wrote it. I think the person meant something along the lines of "man fühlt sich intelligent" and tried to translate it literally. In German a lot more verbs are used reflexively than in English and it can lead to some interesting and sometimes funny :) mistakes.
To an English speaker saying "I feel myself intelligent" sounds like saying "Ich fühle mir intelligent." in German.
To an English speaker saying "I feel myself intelligent" sounds like saying "Ich fühle mir intelligent." in German.
Я чувствую себя глупо. Я не хочу чувствовать себя глупо. Поэтому я не чувствую себя глупо.
It could be a calque from Spanish (and presumably other Romance languages) as well: "Me siento inteligente." In Spanish, you usually use the reflexive pronoun when the verb is being used intransitively, and omit it when it's used transitively. Spanish has a lot of verbs like that.
Seems odd that so many languages have this construction, though.
- Kef
Seems odd that so many languages have this construction, though.
- Kef
About Romance languages (not sure all of them), literally translated "feel yourself intelligent" would make some sense, because you are feeling it inside as in "I think I'm intelligent", "it makes me think I'm intelligent", but you might be wrong. So you are *thinking to yourself*.