Post #3606880

Spanish ‘usted’ and Portuguese ‘você’, words meaning “you”, don’t look much alike, but they have the same origin: Latin ‘vostram mercēdem’, literally “your mercy”. Click my new graphic to learn how ‘vostram mercēdem’, a reverential way of addressing someone indirectly, gradually became the pronouns ‘você’, ‘usted’, and Catalan ‘vostè’ – a fascinating history in which no Arabic was involved, contrary to a persistent myth.