conmigo, contigo, consigo, contiguo

Question

My teacher told me last semester that there was only conmigo and contigo. Me, in my nerdiness, picked up a spanish/english dictionary and found consigo and contiguo. Can you make me understand when to use them?

Answer 1

consigo means "with yourself (usted), himself, herself, yourselves (ustedes), and themselves" so you would use it when you need to express that idea in Spanish. conmigo, contigo and consigo are the only special pronomial forms expressing "with..."

contiguo means "contiguous" that is touching the thing next to it or "adjacent". Los Estados Unidos contiguos excludes Hawaii and Alaska.

I didn't think outside the box with contiguo. Duh on my part. - gringojrf, Jan 19, 2013

Answer 2

Well consigo is easy. Contigo is the you (informal) and consigo is the you (formal) so you would use consigo anytime you would use contigo but are talking in the formal voice.

Contiguo I have never heard so I will leave it to someone else.

As a side note. conmigo (with me), contigo (with you), consigo (with you)

You can also say con él, con ella, con ellos, con ellas, con ud and con uds. instead of consigo.

And the negative do not have a similar form. Thus there is no sintigo, etc.

Glad I could help you "out of the box". Truthfully I just looked it up in the dictionary as I thought it was a strange pronoun. I changed "it" to "is" in your first sentence. - Jubilado, Jan 19, 2013

Answer 3

I used consigo , once, in a message to a Spanish friend and was instantly told that it doesn't exist. Although, I think Jubilado may have a point, that's more special use.. Might be safer to say ' Está muy contento consí mismo..' I'm guessing a bit here.