Cortesía
Cortesía. Courtesy, politeness. It’s important in every language.
Almost all of them make a basic distinction between ‘you’ when addressing one person and ‘you’ when talking to many. Peninsular Spanish has ‘tú’ for one person and ‘vosotros’ for several. And in the River Plate region of Argentina and Uruguay, they use another form as well: ‘vos’.
But these words are generally reserved for family and close friends. To show added respect, Spanish has two other words for ‘you’: ‘usted’ for one person, and ‘ustedes’ for many. ‘Usted’ was an abbreviation of ‘Vuestra Merced’, which literally means “Your grace”. Cortesía.
English also used to have a distinction between singular and plural ‘you’, but the singular form ‘thou’ was ousted. Why? Because it was thought more polite to speak to everybody using the plural form ‘you’. Cortesía.
Click on the following links to chapter 3 (NABULIONE) of our must-read book on language learning, THE LANGUAGE SECRET.
