borrowing pronouns

[Rick Mc Callister]

	This one's hard to prove either way.
	That usted looks like ustadh is obvious but forms based on vuesa
merced, vuestras mercedes DO come close to usted.
	BUT if usted is documented before the other forms, I'd say it is
very possible that usted is from Arabic and that the other forms are folk
etymologies. Conversely, one could argue that usted is the folk etymology
--provided that one could show that the other forms predated it.
	The problem lies in that one has to wonder why usted didn't appear
in Old Spanish when Arabic influence was much strong. I'd guess that the
only possible way to argue that Usted is from Arabic would be to try to
maintain that's it's a loanword from Mozarabe that spread from the South.
But you'd have to document that.

[snip]

>Well, part of the argument involves, would you believe it?, some
>comparative linguistics. Corresponding to Sp. <usted>, Ptg has <voce^>,

Voce^ is more often said to stem from vossa excelencia, at least according
to the Portuguese professors and Brazilian linguistics students I knew in
grad school.

>and Catalan has <voste`>. In renaissance Spanish we have not only
><usted> but also <vuesarced>, <voac'e>, <vuce'>, <vuced>, <vusted>; and
>in mod. Sp dialects (including America) <buste'>.

	I've never come across vuste', ect., anywhere in Latin America but
that doesn't mean that it doesn't exist. But I'd wonder if it wasn't heard
from a Spanish immigrant.

>With all those,
>alongside, of course, of the perfectly well attested <vuestra merced>

Vuestra merced is technically wrong in that vuestra is used to address more
than one person. The corresponding singular form is vuesa merced.

>Cat. <vostra merce`> the similarity between Mod Sp <usted> and Ar
><usta:d> begins to look rather less interesting.

>I go along with Miguel CV on this, and the accusation that he hadn't
>done his homework is gratuitously offensive. If JPM had done his, he'd
>have known the sort of facts I mention in the previous paragraph.

[snip]