Vusted, vusía , vuecencia.
According to Wikipedia, appart from usted and ustedes, there are a few more polite personal pronouns in Spanish:
2nd person, singular: usted/vusted/vusía/vuecencia
2nd person, plural: usted/vustedes/vusías/vuecencias
Where are vusted-es/vusía-s/vuecencia-s used? What is their etymology?
2nd person, plural: ustedes/vustedes/vusías/vuecencias
please moderator, delete the message Guest Fri Dec 21, 2007 12:36 pm GMT .
Usted comes from "vuestra merced" so usted probably has the same origin, same with vustedes. Note that in Latin America ustedes is the only 2nd person pronoun used, in formal and informal situations. But the others I've never heard them. Son más raros que un perro a cuadros.
For the second person singular in formal situations there's another pronoun "su merced" which becomes "sumercé".
thanks for the information, Rodrigo. I read about vusted/vuecencia/vuesía in Wikipedia, but I can't find anywhere if these ones are still used or not and in which countries. Probably they are archaic and no longer used in normal speech. For example vuesía appears in Don Quixote many times.
Vuecencia is preceded by the possesive adjective su as well. For example "¿Su vuecencia desea tomar té o café?"
The origin of -usted- could derive from two possible sources.
Those being:
Old-Spanish = Vuestra merced = Vuested = Vusted = Usted : formal
Arabic = Ustadd (m.) Ustadda (f.) : formal
According to RAE usted derives from Vuestra Merced. It's attested vusted as an older version of usted, hence Arabic Ustadd has nothing to do with Usted. It's much more logic that usted derived from vusted, rather than a strange arabic word.
I think that vusía is a beautiful word. Let's use it instead of the tu/usted.
Yeah, we missed you, because someone needs to clean up this forum from this evil nazi language "German"
vusia is used in Sicialian as well
Is there a book that native speakers of Spanish use for looking up the origin of words in Spanish? A book that people throughout the Spanish speaking world use?
Yes, RAE Spanish dictionary usually provides the etymologies of words, but for example in Wikipedia usted appears as deriving from Arabic ustadd, or at least as influenced by it. RAE doesn't say anything like that. Also in Wikipedia vusía appears as a kind of an exotic alternative to usted but according to RAE this word simply does not exist. As far as I know, this word is frankly strange, it's only appears in Don Quixote.
Sorry, I meant to say it only appears in Don Quixote.
Oh, I see the reply, thanks. It answers other questions I had.