The word "usted" is a product of colonial slave mentality and we shouldn't forget it! (My Spanish teacher actually did teach us this)https://twitter.com/desusnice/status/1377482764711309312 …
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Replying to @revivingfisking
Okay well you know that the t-v distinction is a general thing in many languages (in English the two words are "thou" and "you") and that they're literally just the singular and plural 2nd person ("thou" is one person, "you" is multiple people)
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Replying to @arthur_affect @revivingfisking
But for various cultural reasons the "polite" thing to do was to address someone you didn't know well in the plural rather than the singular "Thou" became "rude" when talking to someone you didn't know well, until in English "you" just became universal
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Replying to @arthur_affect @revivingfisking
As like an extension of the "royal we" Well they had that in Spanish too but it went a different direction
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Replying to @arthur_affect @revivingfisking
In Spanish the "thou" word ("tú") never died out, though I'm told in Argentina calling everyone "vos" is a regional thing But in the 17th century the Spanish aristocracy started going even further and being *ultra*-polite
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Replying to @arthur_affect @revivingfisking
Habitually addressing your social betters in the *third* person, by a title Not just "vosotros" or "vos" but "Vuestra Merced", "Your Mercy"
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Replying to @arthur_affect @revivingfisking
There were multiple titles, like "Your Grace", "Your Highness", etc but "Your Mercy" was the all-purpose one And "Your Mercy" became so commonly used that it got slurred and shortened from "Vuestra Merced" to "vuestraced" to "vuestred" to just "usted"
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Replying to @arthur_affect @revivingfisking
This is why the grammatical quirk that when fully spelled out "usted" is lowercase but abbreviated as "Ud." it's capitalized, it's technically a proper noun
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Replying to @arthur_affect @revivingfisking
And see, while in Spain "tú" (informal 2nd person singular), "usted" (formal 2nd person singular), "vosotros" (informal 2nd person plural) and "ustedes" (formal 2nd person plural) all coexist, in Latin America they were so ultra-polite "usted" completely replaced "vosotros"
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The ONLY WAY to speak to someone politely in Mexico is to call them "Your Grace", the actual word "you" has become archaic and obsolete And while some would just call this a quirk of language, it is obviously related to 17th century Spain being a massive colonial slave empire
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Replying to @arthur_affect @revivingfisking
People in the colonies spoke much more formally and ultra-politely than in Spain because they had to It's creepy when you think about what "usted" literally means, "Your Mercy" You're begging "Hey random dude please don't call the cops on me" with every sentence
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