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Sinmigo or sintigo

Sinmigo or sintigo

4
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OK, this isn't actually my question. I have a bi-lingual friend in Chile that I talk to who has a younger sister who only speaks Spanish. It's fun to be forced to leave English behind as a backup. But at one point in our conversation she corrected my use of "tú" to "ti" and then she asked:

por que es sin ti y contigo y no sintigo o con ti?

Well, how the heck am I supposed to know? I'm the student; she's the native (albeit just 9). I replied:

LOL... si TÚ no sabes, no puedo saber! grin

I asked my friend later, but my friend didn't know either. A google search turned up more Spanish speakers asking this than English speakers. I gather "sintigo" or "sinmigo" are used a few places, but it's bad grammar.

Can anyone shed a light on this or have an answer to the question?

6557 views
updated Oct 11, 2016
posted by ArgleBargle

1 Answer

4
votes

From what I can tell:

It is simply how the language developed.

From what I can tell, migo and tigo and sigo derive from the latin for with me with you and with si. In error Spanish added a con to them, making a redundancy. Weirder things have happened in the development of languages.

References:

https://ar.answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20100603093438AAo5wOW

Mejor respuesta: Por errores en el origen de algunas palabras. Mecum,tecum y secum dieron origen a migo,tigo y sigo que respectivamente constituían ´´con mi´´,´´con ti´´y ´´con si´´ y al agregarle ´´con´´convirtieron estas palabras en ´´redundancias aceptadas´´,conmigo,contigo y consigo.

http://forum.wordreference.com/threads/sinmigo-sintigo-sinsigo.395582/

"Conmigo" y compañía proceden de una corrupción del latín, donde la preposición "con" ("cum") se ponía detrás del pronombre ("mecum"). Al poner la preposición delante, se mantuvo la original, quedándose duplicada: "cum mecum" -> "conmigo" (con con mí)

No tiene ningún sentido hacer esto con "sin": ¿"sintigo" = sin con mí? En todo caso habría de ser "sinmisine" o algo así, pero en latín el "sine" iba delante del pronombre, así que sigue sin tener sentido.

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updated Oct 11, 2016
posted by bosquederoble
Lol - rac1, Oct 10, 2016
:) - ian-hill, Oct 10, 2016
Ah, that makes excellent sense. Funny you included the dino picture. When I told my friend about her sister's question, I mentioned "drive on parkway, park on a driveway." (She hadn't heard of a parkway, but it was easily explained.) - ArgleBargle, Oct 11, 2016