ich schaue mich

i see myself

I look at myself rather

ich sehe mich

anschauen

ich schaue mich an

yeah ok i forgot the preposition

ich schaue mich an

ich schaue mir is a completely different thing

ja

well ok

with akkusativ it's just imperativ

mir/mich
dir/dich
?/sich

i dont think there is anything there

"Ich schaue mir X" means "I look at X for my own pleasure"

it's the same thing we talked about

like

yesterday

look, for your pleasure, at my city

but whats dir doing there

schau meine stadt an would technically be correct as well

but including dir gives it a sound of strolling through it experiencing it first hadn

like dave said, for your own pelasure

its a decent thought to keep in mind

it would also work on the opposite sense, mind you

for example

let's say you have a friend who's about to come to your city

and you told him not to ocme because it's a shitty place

then he comes anyway

and you say

schau dir mein stadt

he talks about *sich anschauen* but he uses dativ personal pronoun why

it's like

yeah

and everybody in this thread does

take a fucking look at how shitty it is

it makes it more personal, more emotive, more feel-based

looks like sich is universal in 3rd person

but sich anschauen cannot become *ich schaue mir*