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Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!burl!ulysses!mhuxr!mhuxn!ihnp4!qantel!dual!mordor!ut-sally!im4u!jsq
From: jsq@im4u.UUCP (John Quarterman)
Newsgroups: net.nlang
Subject: Re: Second Person Plural
Message-ID: <540@im4u.UUCP>
Date: Thu, 19-Sep-85 18:22:17 EDT
Article-I.D.: im4u.540
Posted: Thu Sep 19 18:22:17 1985
Date-Received: Sun, 22-Sep-85 05:36:06 EDT
References: <2609@ihnss.UUCP>
Reply-To: jsq@im4u.UUCP (John Quarterman)
Organization: U. Texas CS Dept., Austin, Texas
Lines: 35
Summary: 

In article <2609@ihnss.UUCP> michael@ihnss.UUCP (M. J. Morgan) writes:
>As in English, Spanish is losing some of its formality.  It has four words
>for the second person, "tu," "vosotros," "usted," and "ustedes," one each
>for the familiar second person, singular and plural, and the formal second
>person, singular and plural.  The "familiar" pronouns take second person
>verb conjugations, and the "formal" pronouns (usted and ustedes) take third
>person verb conjugations.  "Vosotros" has pretty much disappeared from the
>language in Latin America, with "ustedes" being used exclusively for the
>second person plural.  I have also talked to people complaining of a tendency
>of younger people towards using "usted" exclusively for the second person
>singular.

Curiously enough, usted and usteds are not the original Spanish formal 
second person pronouns.  Usted is a contraction of vuestra merced
("your mercy" or "your grace") which originated as a form of address
in the Spanish court around the sixteenth century and spread.  Ustedes
is just the obvious plural of usted.  This explains why usted and ustedes
take third person verb conjugations.

If I recall correctly, the original Spanish formal singular second
person pronoun was vos, with vosotros as the plural for both formal and
familiar (like nos and nosotros).  Vosotros partly remains, as you
mention, as the familiar second person plural.  Vos is very archaic and
is only used nowadays to address the deity.

This is from memory of a book about the development of Spanish
which I read ten years ago, so don't be surprised if it isn't
entirely accurate.

Note the similarity of Spanish tu and vos to French tu and vous,
or to English thou and you, for that matter.  And the amusing
almost-parallel of vuestra merced -> usted with you all -> y'all.
-- 
John Quarterman,   UUCP:  {ihnp4,seismo,harvard,gatech}!ut-sally!jsq
ARPA Internet and CSNET:  jsq@sally.UTEXAS.EDU, formerly jsq@ut-sally.ARPA


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