conmigo/con me
Hola mis amigos!
Is there any difference between conmigo and con me? Both of them mean with me. I figure that conmigo is somehow a combination of con and migo, but Idid find such a word migo in the dictionary.
Eso es todo, gracias y adiós
6 Answers
Hi Moh1
I figure that conmigo is somehow a combination of con and migo, but Idid find such a word migo in the dictionary.
The word "conmigo," "contigo," and "consigo" are all relics passed down from Latin, and because of this, you would be hard pressed to find the forms "migo," "tigo," or "sigo" in any Spanish dictionary. In Classical Latin, however, we witness the forms mecum (migo), tecum (tigo) and secum (sigo), as well as the plurals nobiscum (first person plural) and vobiscum (second person plural). The general paradigm at work here is the post-positioning of the Latin word "cum (con/with)" to each respective ablative pronoun:
?cum + me ? mecum
?cum + te ? tecum
?cum + nobis ? nobiscum
?cum + vobis ? vobiscum
In many archaic languages (including those which predated Latin), the class of particles (i.e. adpositions) that would develop into what we now recognize as prepositions were typically found post-positioned to the word being governed.
By the time the Roman Empire had emerged as a major world power, however, this trend had reversed so that in the Latin characteristic of this period, we generally find preposing to be the norm. Nevertheless, we do find examples of this post-positioning in instances where an ablative pronoun is combined with a preposition (such as ad, per, in and tenus, among others). Interestingly, Cicero, writing around 55 BC in De Oratore, makes the following comments:
quid, illud non olet unde sit, quod dicitur 'cum illis', 'cum' autem 'nobis' non dicitur, se 'nobiscum'? quia si ita diceretur, obscenius concurrerent litterae, ut etiam modo, nisi 'autem' interposuissem, concurrissent. ex eo est 'mecum' et 'tecum', non 'cum me', et 'cum te', ut esset simile illis 'nobiscum' atque 'vobiscum'.
Loosely translated as:
How is it that we should say "cum illis," but "cum" and "nobis" are never said together except as "nobiscum?" Because if it were to be said this way, the letters would blend together to form an obscene expression, as they would have had I not interposed "autem." From this we derive "mecum" and "tecum" rather than "cum me" and "cum te" to remain consistent to the forms "nobiscum" and "vobiscum."
In this text, Cicero suggests that the entire paradigm found its origins in the desire to avoid the obscene sounding expression "cum nobis (with us)." Whether this practice was simply a stylistic strategy or a remnant of an earlier linguistic tradition is unclear, but the latter explanation does appear the more plausible of the two, especially considering that we also see this form with the relative pronouns (i.e. cum + quo ? quocum; cum + quibus ? quibuscum, etc).
Nonetheless, Latin, for the most part, heavily favored the pre-positional strategy over the use of post-positioning (again, mostly limited to the ablative), and, perhaps as a result of this influence, it became common to see the (perhaps redundant) preposition "cum" appear in conjunction with expressions such as "mecum" and "tecum." For example:
• Cum mecum multa et de multis saepius animo reuoluens in hystoriam regum Britanniae inciderem...
• Comes vero non sustinens conflictum gentis regias, etiam cum secum haberet Willelmum de Albemara
In any case, this tradition seems to have been passed down through Vulgar Latin to many of the Romance languages so that Old Spanish adopted the slightly amended forms:
?cum mecum ? conmigo
?cum tecum ? contigo
?cum noscum ? conusco
?cum voscum ? convusco
As Spanish continued to evolve, these last two forms were abandoned in favor of "con nos(otros)" and "con vos(otros)," respectively. Interestingly, the RAE still maintains a listing for the antiquated terms "convusco" and "vusco."
I'll never ever forget conmigo because on one of my Spanish papers last year, I had con mí and my teacher literally crossed it out and wrote
CONMIGO
in big letters 
Con mí doesn't exist!
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The part about con mí vs conmigo...
I'll never forget it either because in my class we learned to use con to mean with, but we never learned the special words for 'with me' and 'with you'.
Our teacher didn't like us to use words we have not learned in our assignments, so I wrote Yo comparto una habitacion con mi novio when I wanted to mean él comparte una habitacion conmigo, and I guess my workaround didn't work because she corrected my sentence and changed it to 'conmigo' despite not having taught the word!
Yes, you are right Qfreed. con mí.
If I understand your answer, then con mí. ** turns to be **conmigo and con títurns to be contigo . Am I correct?
Anyway, mucos gracias.
