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Vós in regular speech (Portuguese) | ||
Tags: Portuguese | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages |  | |
| 1e4e6 Octoglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4291 days ago 1013 posts - 1588 votes  Speaks: English*, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Norwegian, Dutch, Swedish, Italian Studies: German, Danish, Russian, Catalan | Message 1 of 21 22 August 2013 at 5:29am | IP Logged | ||
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How oftrn is it to hear vós in regular speech, especially in Portugal? If I remember
correctly, I learnt that usually those born before the Second World War and in small northern towns in Portugal used it, but I watched this programmeL http://youtu.be/Fl5n6BIChpk?t=10m7s To me it sounded like, <<É uma cidade, preferencialmente deve ser conhecida caminando, reservaria(?) ser uma sorpresa para vós...>>, unless I heard wrongly. But I am not sure if it would be odd if a learner used vós in speech regularly in, for example, Lisboa. Edited by 1e4e6 on 22 August 2013 at 6:22am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Acut Tetraglot Groupie Brazil Joined 4701 days ago 53 posts - 101 votes Speaks: Portuguese*, English, Spanish, French | Message 2 of 21 22 August 2013 at 4:01pm | IP Logged | ||
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I heard
"Havana é uma cidade [que] preferencialmente deve ser conhecida caminhando. Reservei uma surpresa para vós.." (I see you learn Spanish as well, so be careful not to confuse sorpresa/caminando (Spanish)with surpresa/caminhando (Portuguese)) I am a Brazilian Portuguese speaker, and I can say you will very rarely hear "vós" here, even in quite formal contexts - except, perhaps, religious ones. A Brazilian would immediately switch to você/vocês. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| fabriciocarraro Hexaglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member Brazil russoparabrasileirosRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4716 days ago 989 posts - 1454 votes Speaks: Portuguese*, EnglishB2, Italian, Spanish, Russian, French Studies: Dutch, German, Japanese | Message 3 of 21 22 August 2013 at 4:35pm | IP Logged | ||
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Here in Brazil you'll most likely never ever hear the "vós" pronoun or its conjugations, or even the possessive pronouns. I've never produced it myself, and only heard it at the church when I was a child.
I asked a Portuguese friend (she's from Aveiro, in the North) and she said that they also almost never use the personal pronoun + conjugation (like "Vós fazeis..."), only in epic/medieval tales and things like that. She said though that they use the possessive "vosso", "vossa", "vossos", "vossos" more commonly. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| MarcoLeal Groupie Portugal Joined 4835 days ago 58 posts - 104 votes Speaks: Portuguese* | Message 4 of 21 22 August 2013 at 5:35pm | IP Logged | ||
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I am Portuguese and can I confirm that the usage of Vós has been declining for quite some time now. Basically, it's only used when you want to speak in a formal register (and even there, vocês is quite common) or when you want to emulate speech patterns from past ages. A prime example would be its usage in the Bible. Specially in northern Portugal, however, the pronoun is still used quite often by the elderly. Like fabricio pointed out, related forms of this pronoun are still used quite frequently, such vosso(s)/a(s) (possessive pronouns) or vos (indirect object pronoun).
If I had to guess why the pronoun lost popularity, I would say it's because the verbal forms associated with it usually diverge the most from the verb stem and sound somewhat stilted. In fact, even in the case of simple, everyday-life verbs, some Portuguese will have doubts about how to properly conjugate the verb for that pronoun. Let's take the example of the verb ter: Eu tenho Tu tens Ele tem Nós temos Vós tendes Eles têm Although any native speaker of Portuguese can conjugate this verb for all other pronouns without breaking a sweat, I can guarantee many will have to think about it for a couple of seconds in the case of vós and may even not be able to produce the correct answer at all. It gets worse for less common and irregular verbs. Of course one could argue that that happens precisely because people use the pronoun less and not the other way around but it seems to me that both factors play a role here, in a sort of feedback loop. Edited by MarcoLeal on 22 August 2013 at 5:41pm 5 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Medulin Tetraglot Senior Member Croatia Joined 4669 days ago 1199 posts - 2192 votes Speaks: Croatian*, English, Spanish, Portuguese Studies: Norwegian, Hindi, Nepali | Message 5 of 21 22 August 2013 at 5:41pm | IP Logged | ||
yeah, the correct form is vós TENDES 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| MarcoLeal Groupie Portugal Joined 4835 days ago 58 posts - 104 votes Speaks: Portuguese* | Message 6 of 21 22 August 2013 at 5:44pm | IP Logged | ||
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Yeah I just realized it too :) I posted it but then started thinking about it and realized I had just proved my own point :D
1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| 1e4e6 Octoglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4291 days ago 1013 posts - 1588 votes Speaks: English*, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Norwegian, Dutch, Swedish, Italian Studies: German, Danish, Russian, Catalan | Message 7 of 21 22 August 2013 at 10:52pm | IP Logged | ||
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Interesting, since it seems more similar to the Spanish vosotros than the French vous or
Italian voi, but in Spanish the vosotros form is used everyday. I think I had read that the north of Portugal did use this form, so does that mean that the man in the video is probably from the Braga/Coimbra/Minho northern regions? I think the programme also noted that he was 47 years old, so middle-aged, and not elderly. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| MarcoLeal Groupie Portugal Joined 4835 days ago 58 posts - 104 votes Speaks: Portuguese* | Message 8 of 21 23 August 2013 at 12:12am | IP Logged | ||
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Judging by his accent he is probably from the Porto region. Minho is also possible.
He is not elderly but since he is making some kind of presentation for TV he is probably trying to be careful about the choice of words and to sound somewhat formal. The truth is Vós is still thought of as the canonical pronoun, so to speak. To give you an idea of how much that is the case: When we learn about personal pronouns in school Vocês is not even mentioned at all. Well, at least it wasn't back when I was in school (I'm 24 years old now) and it certainly was no different for a 47 year-old. So, even though, like I said before, Vocês is increasingly more an acceptable alternative and not really considered substandard except in the most elevated registers of the language, it's easy to see how somebody in his situation might want to use Vós to be on the "safe side". That said, it could just be his style of speaking. What I said in my previous post should be understood as trends not as hard and fast rules. Don't get me wrong, it's not like Vós turned into some kind of alien or anything and it probably also didn't become a rarity from a generation to the next. It just got slowly out of fashion. So even though it's not as common for a 47 year old to use vós as it is for a 77 year-old, it still is a lot more normal than it is for a 17 year-old. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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