Geograhical distribution of "viniste">"veniste"
All grammars and dictionaries I have seen list the preterite of "venir" with an "i" vowel throughout the conjugation, including the forms "viniste" and "vinimos".
However, is seems that at least in Mexico, the actual forms used tend to be "veniste", "venimos", with the forms "viniste" and "vinimos" apparently being restricted to fairly literary use. Whilst it's not surprising for a dictionary to cite the more formal/literary alternatives, it surprises me that I have not seen even fairly descriptive grammars (e.g. Butt & Bejamin or Franch & Blecua) which do, for example, mention alternatives such as "quepo"~"cabo", "roo"~"royo", mention "vinimos"~"venimos".
(I should specify that "veniste"/"venimos" as preterite forms are pretty much the usual forms used by educated native speakers in Mexico: unlike, say, "cabo" for "quepo", they're not stigmatised-- it seems that if anything "viniste" and "vinimos" are the stigmatised forms because they can sound overly literary.)
So I was wondering: in people's experience, to what extent is this phenomenon restricted to Mexican Spanish, or does it occur in other regions/varieties? Have we reached the point where it's time to replace "vinimos" with "venimos" as the usual neutral preterite form of the verb "venir"?
2 Answers
Have we reached the point where it's time to replace "vinimos" with "venimos" as the usual neutral preterite form of the verb "venir"?
In Spain you will never hear that, so that point must be somewhere else.
The Gramática descriptiva de la lengua española, a much more comprehensive and detailed descriptive grammar than the one from J. A. Franch and J. M. Blecua, does not mention that deviation, and the Diccionario panhispánico de dudas, which is also descriptive to a certain extent, says nothing about it.
However, in the Nueva gramática de la lengua española, co-written by Mexican academic experts, they explain that:
En la lengua hablada de algunos países se emplean todavía las formas antiguas venimos y veniste (lat. venisti): ¿Ya te veniste?, pues dímelo (Martín Campo, Carreteras), que no se han integrado, sin embargo, en el habla culta.
In other words, those are not the future of the Spanish conjugation, but the past (veniste -> viniste), which is why it can be sporadically found in old literature, and why still survives colloquially in some places. From what I've checked with friends from other countries, it is not used elsewhere.
If you want to check with someone, contact José G. Moreno de Alba, from the Academia Mexicana de la Lengua, who agreed with the statement written above, an expert in Spanish in Latin America and general dialectical variations. From his books I've learnt a lot of what I know about variations of Spanish in Latin America.
I've never heard it in Ecuador.
