confusion with vuestro?

Question

Is vuestro used instead of su sometimes even when it's only one person? I was watching pan's labryinth and didn't understand

Answer 1

I just finished reading El Principito. When he visited a planet ruled by a king I think the king used Os and Vuestro, etc. when referring to himself. In England I think that was what they referred to as the Royal "we".

I don't recall when Vuestra Merced was used for usted, but you may have been listening to historical speech like in an Shakespearean play or Middle English.

ah this makes a lot of sense now i understand it;s like in macbeth when they use the royal "we" when the king says something about himself he uses we because he's representing his country? but also why wouldn't they just use uds isn't that more formal? - reinitabonita, May 2, 2010

Answer 2

In Pan's labyrinth the Faun guy does use old Spanish "Voseo" and as such he will call the little girl "vos," use "vuestro," the "os" pronoun and vos verb conjugations. Maybe the last time he was above ground was in the 1700's or something.

Answer 3

I found this on Wikipedia and thought it was relevant:

[...] in Spain [...] vos denoted high social status by those who were addressed as such (monarchs, nobility, etc.) [...] Today vos is still considered a highly exalted archaism that is confined to liturgy, and its use by native Spaniards is seen as deliberate archaism.

As I recall, and it has been a while since I saw the movie, the faun is super old; he's been waiting for her for a long time, so it would make a certain amount of sense for him to use vos to address her, because he thinks she's a princess and that was how royalty were addressed.

Answer 4

I asked the same question to a spanish teacher I watched this movie with (If you're reading this and haven't seen it, by the way, it's one of my favorite movies, so I would advise watching it)

Anyway, the answer he gave me was that using the pronoun vosotros- and all related conjugations and cases of the pronoun-- is considered to be a more elegant way of addressing someone. I've heard also that vosotros is considered to be the informal version of ustedes, which seems to contradict what my spanish teacher had said. :/

So maybe the meaning has changed over time, as dandi suggested, or maybe across countries. I'm sorry such a long post didn't supply an answer, but I'm interested to see how true this information is.

Vosotros is the informal version of ustedes, it's for a group of people you'd address individually as 'tú'. Vosotros can (or could in the past) also be used, as your teacher said, for extra politeness to a single person. - MacFadden, May 1, 2010

The uses do seem a bit contradictory, but the formality of using vosotros for a single person comes from it being plural. Usted actually comes from vosotors, via 'Vuestra merced', which was squished into 'Usted'. That's why you sometimes see Vd. for Ud. - MacFadden, May 1, 2010

Thanks so much! That's so interesting. Etymology is awesome! - Perry-Bleiberg, May 2, 2010

Answer 5

Wish I could find the similar question to this that I answered not very long ago.

Quite a lot of Central Americans use "vuestro" instead of "tu" (not I think "su") and also the corresponding verb forms etc. quite often. Kids in Buenos Aires do the same and I have a feeling that I've heard it somewhere in Spain too (Galicia??).

Sadly I know nothing about Pan's Labyrinth so I can't make a connection there.

Are you thinking of voseo Spanish (vos for tú)? It has nothing to do with vosotros/vuestro. - 0074b507, May 1, 2010

Classical Spanish voseo did use "vuestro" although it is not used this way in Latin American Voseo. - 003487d6, May 1, 2010