Small talk

Ricordare un nome sits near the end of this list, and the verb inside it does two English jobs that we keep well apart. Left alone with a direct object, ricordare is « remember »: ricordo il suo nome, non ricordo dove ci siamo conosciuti. Give it a person in the dative as well and it becomes the other verb entirely. Ricordami il suo nome is not « I remember » but « remind me of his name », and gli ho ricordato l’appuntamento says that somebody was reminded of the appointment, not that the speaker managed to recall it. The rule is mechanical: whoever turns up in the dative is the one being told. Beside both stands the reflexive, ricordarsi di, which is the ordinary spoken way of saying « remember » when the thing remembered arrives behind a preposition: ti ricordi di lui?, non mi sono ricordato di chiedere. So a single Italian verb covers what English divides between « remember » and « remind », and what decides between them is not the meaning at all but the shape of the sentence around it.