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I have just begun learning Spanish, our professor was explaining about 'me' and 'te'.
I am totally confused about when you use 'me', 'te', 'os' and 'vos'. Is there some rule? Where do you use them?
Eg: "¿Cómo te llamas?", why can't "¿Cómo tú llamas?" be used?
Pronouns are words that substitute for nouns. In the case of ¿Como te llamas?, you are using what is alternatively called a pronominal verb or a reflexive verb and these require reflexive pronouns such as me, te, se, nos, and os. At an elementary level you will use these verbs in two main contexts.
We often focus too much on the mechanics of grammar. It's valuable to know when to focus on the grammar and when to use your intuition and forget about grammar. For now, I'd recommend focusing on the grammar for #1 above and not so much for #2.
Yo, tu, vos, él, ella, usted, nosotros, vosotros, and ustedes are personal pronouns used in the subject of a sentence. In an elementary Spanish class, you will see these the most.
Sometimes, the pronoun is an object instead of a subject. "Will you help me?" can be asked in Spanish "¿(Tu) me ayudas?" In this case, the person asking the question is the object because he receives the action (help). Me is a direct object pronoun along with te, lo, la, nos, os, los, and las.
Probably the best summary of Spanish pronouns is available from an old course at Indiana University - Purdue University Ft. Wayne.
First of all let me tell you that asking isn't dumb, none of us born knowing it all, so don't worry about asking, in fact it's better than staying in doubt!
I'll work with your example so you get the point easily.
You can't say: "¿Cómo tú llamas?" because it's literally as if you said: "What is you name?"
Instead your teacher told you that the correct way is: "¿Cómo te llamas?", as when you say: "What is your name?"
In some cases there is a tacit subject, when in Spanish you omit the pronoun, example: Me gusta ir al cine, which means: I like to go to the movies.
The pronoun isn't written, but you could: "(A mi) Me gusta ir al cine."
Now, for the 'os' and 'vos', those are forms particularly used in Spain and South America, in some countries like México they are "deprecated" or different, like US-English: Organization and UK-English: Organisation. You will find for example:
In this case the three forms mean the same.
Final note for the above example: Se is formal like usted, and Te is informal like Tú.
“¿Cómo te llamas?” does not mean “What is your name?” but rather “What do you call yourself?”. “What is your name?” is “¿Cual es tu nombre?” (literally: which one is your name (out of the millions of names out there)). “Llamarse” is a reflexive verb, meaning an action performed by the person mentioned. A reflexive is a special verb that gets split when used. Think of the ending “se” as short for “self”. These are the conjugations for llamarse depending on the pronoun used (who is speaking):
We could add the personal pronouns in front for clarification:
We usually ”call ourselves” by the names our parents gave us at birth, or a nickname we like.
I suppose you were learning about 'verbos pronominales'1, those verb end in se, eg. laverse, llamarse, irse etc. E.g:
I wash myself = (Yo) me lavo
The verb is lavarse
Who/what is washing? I wash: yo lavo
Who/what am I washing? Myself/me: me
You help me = (Tu) me ayudas
The verb is ayudarse
Who/what is helping? You help: tu ayudas
Who/what are you helping? Me: me
I fall = (Yo) me caigo"
The verb in this case is caerse, not caer. In English the verb is 'to fall', in Spanish it would be 'to fall myself'. Sounds strange, and don't border to much, you'll get used to it very soon.
Who is falling? I fall: Yo caigo
Who am I falling? Myself: me... this sounds strange, but for sure I don't fall someone else ;)
You are called Stanford = (Tu) te llamas Stanford
The verb is llamarse, not llamar. Here literal translation to English becomes even more difficult. It would be something like 'to call/name yourself'.
The verb 'llamar' means to phone someone or to ask someone to come closer (which you can also translate by call, but it has another meaning). Saying "¿Cómo tu llamas?" could mean something like "How do you make phone-calls?"
Who is calling: You call: Tú llamas
You are calling yourself: te
The rule I recommend you is to check if the verb ends with -se. Then you know you have to use an extra personal pronoun (me, te, ...).
For sure, when English version contains something like: me, you (not as subject), us, myself, yourself... it is also translated by one of those little words (I made a small list your professor probably gave you:
Pronoun as a subject (sujeto)
yo: I
tú: you
nosostros: we
vosotros: you
The equivalent (in)direct objects or objetos (in)directos
me: me
te: you
nos: us
os: you
vosis a personal pronoun, liketú(used only in some latin america's countries)