Singular imperatives
Last week, I heard a Spanish-speaking tour guide address her European tour group collectively with singular familiar imperatives. Is this use common and legitimate?
2 Answers
Singular for a group? Definitely not! Are you sure it was a singular imperative? In Spain the informal imperative in the second formal plural is not used everywhere else, but it is not identical to the singular one: in regular tenses add a -d at the end which is barely pronounced, but the stress is moved towards the last syllable (which is why we never mistake one for another.)
Mira (tú)
Mirad (vosotros)
(Stressed syllables in bold)
In Spanish stress is more important than in English, and sometimes students are not used to noticing these differences.
Maybe he/she was using the "vos" imperative.
Mirá (vos), instead of Mirad (vosotros), voseo sounds tipically Argentine
This is not the same as Mira (tú)
