In generic terms, “se propasó” (he overstepped social boundaries), “se pasó de la raya” (id, although this one can also be used without a sexual meaning), “abusó sexualmente de mí” (he abused me sexually, you need to specify that it’s sexually or it can mean “he conned me”) or specific acts, like “me tocó” (he touched me), “me agarró del culo” (he grabbed my ass), “me intentó tocar las tetas” (he tried to touch my tits), “se metió donde no debía” (he asked inappropriate questions)… that’s off the top of my head.
Last I checked, Spanish wasn’t short on ways to refer to either sex or boundaries.
The point has nothing to do with whether the following noun is singular or plural. The point is that vuestro(s)/vuestra(s) correspond to vosotros, and vosotros is second-person plural (that’s what I meant by “in the same sense as vosotros”). I don’t know exactly how it’s used by contemporary Spanish speakers, but that’s what it originally meant, right?
Yeah. “Tu” is to “tú” as “vuestro/vuestra” is to “vosotros”. I presume that “vuestra merced” is a case of using the second person plural as a sign of respect. No?
Something like that. But we’re talking about the origins of usted, so the fact that many contemporary speakers use only ustedes as the plural “you” is irrelevant.
Colibri already partly answered this. The other thing we should make clear is that the Spanish imperative looks like the subjunctive (molesten rather than molestan, to give the 3rd-person-plural example), because it IS the subjunctive. As an early post in this thread mentioned, there is an implied verb of wishing or hoping or commanding which is left out. “[I would really prefer you guys] not bother me”, essentially.
To nitpick, vuestro/vuestra corresponds to vos, not vosotros. Vuestros/vuestras corresponds to vosotros, and is the second person plural possessive pronoun.
Vuestro/vuestra is NOT plural, it is singular. The “vuestra merced” is showing respect, in the singular form.
You mentioned vuestra as a second person plural personal pronoun, which it is not.
The difference between vuestra and vuestras is in the number of the noun being possessed, not the number of the possessor. In both cases the possessor is second person plural, as indicated in this table.
I said it is second person plural, which it is. I didn’t say it was a personal pronoun.
Ah, I think I understand you now better. Still, as addressed by the Real Academia Española, it is also singular.
And per above, it is also the second person singular. Think about it… The wikipedia entry forgot 2 things, at least:
In the singular area, it included the forms of second person familiar derived from “tú”, forgetting that “vos” is also a second person familiar. Where are the derived forms of that? Vuestro/vuestra, vuestros/vuestras ARE the corresponding forms for “vos”, second person singular.
In the plural area, as second person “familiar” it included vuestra/vuestro vuestras/vuestros, which are the forms derived for “vosotros”. Ignoring that form most of the Spanish speakers, vosotros is not used (therefore vuestro et. al are not used either). In plural, most speakers, for second person, use “ustedes” either in “familiar” or “formal” settings.
So “vuestra merced” can be “your (singular) mercy”.
Ehr, it’s not. Spanish verbs have three modes: indicative, subjunctive and imperative. The present of the subjunctive is the one that’s “molestara o molestase” etc.
I hate to disagree with a native (Iberian) Spanish speaker, but what you just told me is the PAST subjunctive (usually -ara, etc., although -ase is understood by most).
The imperative is pretty much the same as the PRESENT subjunctive (2nd person singular is the exception, as are some irregular verbs), because, again, there is an implied (unspoken) verb of wishing or commanding.
I find it hard to believe that “Espero que me entiendas” I hope you understand me (indicative -e- changes to -a-), or "No quiero que te mate"I don’t want him/her to kill you (indicative -a- changes to -e-) could be called anything other than present subjunctive. If not, what DO they call this is Spain? Or do they somehow avoid using the form (which has hardly changed since Latin) altogether?
A ver… if two words coincide it doesn’t mean that they are the same.
You’re right in that the ara/ase is the past, but subjunctive and imperative are not the same, even if some of the forms match for some verbs. For starters, imperative doesn’t have the full six persons.
True, they are not exactly the same, but I’m pretty sure that they are related, and were once the same (perhaps in early Latin). And, I’m almost positive this is because they are both, deep down, about the same thing: talking about something which hasn’t happened yet, and isn’t guaranteed to happen. Thus, you have phrases like “caminemos” – “let’s walk”. Is it a present subjunctive, or is it an imperative? In both the Spanish and the English, most people would say it’s a subjunctive form being used to express an (arguably) imperative notion.
Sure enough, the use of subjunctive forms for some imperative situations goes back at least to medieval Latin. From the mists of time right to your hotel doorknob!
About.com is not talking about Spanish grammar. Please stop this, you’re not clarifying things, but confusing them for anybody here who may study Spanish!
The subjunctive and the imperative are not the same. Period.
Nava, your post gets right to the heart of the difference between two styles of teaching. One style is about taking shortcuts to make it easier for an unsophisticated student to learn something quickly but superficially. Just handing someone a list of verb endings, neatly separated into “imperative” and “subjunctive”, would be an example.
The other style is to first discuss what these forms are fundamentally about – again, they are about uncertainty. Then, you would discuss how different languages deal with uncertainity. Then, you would show how late Latin, and then Spanish, came to use subjunctive forms for some “imperative” purposes.
I’m not saying that one approach is always better than the other – it really depends. But I am saying that the student who is taught in the latter manner will understand the language in a way that could even help him/her remember the forms better in practical situations – and to figure out for him/herself how unexpected situations migt be dealt with.
An analogy is with teaching a musical instrument. To teach a beginner how to play the guitar, you could start just by saying “Put your fingers here, here, and here. Good – that’s a D chord. Here’s a list of the chords to your favorite song–let’s figure them out.”
Or, you could start by explaining that each string will play a certain note if plucked without touching the string. By the laws of acoustics, if we touch the string right here (the twelfth fret) – notice how, by doing so, we make the string exactly half as long as it was before! – we will play that same note, an octave higher!
Sure, using the second method, it will take you a week rather than two days to learn how to play “Stairway to Heaven”, but you will have a much deeper foundation, with which you will be much better able to figure things out by yourself.
That is like saying that, much like English -(’)s, the Latin genitive singular uses the nominative plural for most nouns. They are two different constructions which in most but not all words gave identical forms.
Spanish imperative and subjunctive forms converged. One is not used for the other; they are two different verb forms that are constructed in the same way.
It is much like saying that English uses the indicative for every verb but to be in place of the past subujunctive. “If I had a dollar for every time somebody has nitpicked a grammar usage…” is subjunctive, just as “If I were given a dollar for every time…” is – it’s just that all verbs but to be (and hence passive constructions) use identical forms for past indicative and past subjunctive.
BTW, the Real Academia Española does addresses this question, (and the OP) after some digging around… Appropriate link.
Two citations as follow:
When giving an order (in second person plural or singular), the proper forms of the imperative shall be used, if it is an affirmative sentence. The corresponding forms of the subjunctive shall be used IF: 1)The sentence is negative, 2) is introduced by the conjunction que (what), or 3) it is alluding to someone called “usted”.
The infinitive is used in things like signs, warnings, recommendations that are given to a collective, indetermined subject. In these cases, it is not considered an imperative, but instead as a shortcut for a phrase that starts with “Se debe”, “se permite”, “se puede”, and is giving a recommendation, obligation, or prohibition.
Note that the RAE makes a distinction between the verb forms, and does not there (or anywhere in the site I could check) calls the imperative a form of the subjunctive.
Understood. The RAE, apparently, is most interested in taking a snapshot of Spanish – the “Academy” variety of Spanish, of course! – and making prescriptions based on that snapshot. It has little interest in the “whys”, less interest in historical evolution of grammatical forms, and even less interest in the ( deeper matters of language, such as why implied requests could be construed as commands.
This is why lingustics and prescriptive grammars are such entirely different beasts. Both, however, speak to the OP. Which, if I may be so bold, I’d say has been answered excellently by now!
Um… Um… You do not know what RAE is, right? It IS the final authority in terms of what is correct in the Spanish language. It IS interested in all those things you mentioned. It has books on Spanish linguistic and lexicography. Unfortunately, this is what I could find online. Perhaps it DOES talk more in depth in some of the offline citations/books.
But hey, thanks for making me do a language question request to them.
I know exactly what the RAE is, and from their perspective, your “final authority” statement is spot on. However, to a linguist, the sphere within which such a “final authority” matters is small indeed, compared to all the things lingusistics (and language in general) is really about.
The fact that so many non-linguists confuse “prescriptive grammars produced by organizations given imptimaturs by nation-state authorities” with “language” tends to either make linguists smile, or drives them up the wall, depending on how often they have to face this misperception in their professional lives.
Anyway, I concede that the OP could have been answered – indeed, WAS answered – without going into the historical links between imperatives and subjunctives. However, there was still some confusion evident in some posts in the middle of this thread, and I honestly thought that pointing out these links would clear up the confusion, not contribute to it. Not so, apparently. Oh, well.
