In the intricate world of languages, few words carry the weight of history and nuance quite like the Portuguese pronoun ‘você’. Unlike its English counterpart ‘you’, ‘você’ dances a delicate waltz between formality, informality, and even insult, depending on the context and speaker. Let´s delve into the fascinating history and complex usage of this linguistic chameleon in European Portuguese.
Vossa Mercê
The earliest records of ‘Vossa Mercê’ as a form of address date back to the 14th century. However, these refer to a form used by Castilians who were addressing their king or the king of Portugal. This means that the treatment must have been imported from Spain.
This treatment arose because the 2nd person treatment was not enough to flatter the sovereign. Thus, referring to the grace and favor that the monarch should grant to his subjects, it was agreed that the supreme authority should be addressed indirectly using the expression vossa mercê.
From the end of the 15th century, it was no longer used for the king and became vulgarized because everyone liked it and everyone wanted to be treated like the king himself, from dukes and infantes to the lower classes. As it was a long expression and repeated many times, the people transformed it from vossa mercê to ‘vossancê’, ‘vossemecê’, ‘vosmecê’ and even ‘você’.
Você
The pronoun ‘você’ then resulted from the contraction of the expression ‘Vossa Mercê’ and began to be used as a treatment in the use of equal to equal, between friends, even from the upper middle class, without it being considered something depreciative.
Currently, the treatment of ‘você’ is widespread in Portugal, which could indicate that the depreciative or insulting value has already disappeared. However, the question is not so easy because the opinion about its use varies from individual to individual.
Let’s look at some concrete cases:
- Certain people, especially in rural areas, use você to address someone with respect because they associate it with the value of ‘Vossa Mercê’.
- The urban middle class does not accept being addressed by ‘você’, considering it a great lack of respect and education.
- ‘Você’ is usually used as a treatment of distancing, without depreciative value. For example, when a boss addresses his employees, maintaining the distance between them.
- As a treatment of equal to equal, it is used between older people, around sixty years old, mostly men.
- It is often used in everyday situations when addressing someone we do not know (avoiding the tu treatment), when, for example, we ask for information.
- You can hear ‘você’ in advertising, newspapers, radio and television when addressing readers, listeners and viewers.
- In the upper classes, ‘você’ is considered as a treatment of absolute respect, and can even be used with one’s own children.
- Although, nowadays, the treatment of children towards their parents is typically ‘tu’, some people use ‘você’ to address them.
- ‘Você’ is for some a way to depreciate and even insult people of inferior condition (at a social or hierarchical level) to indicate that the person to whom we are addressing does not deserve the treatment of senhor. It can also be interpreted as a snobbish attitude.
- In the North of the country, the use of ‘você’ is considered a huge lack of education.
Through these examples we can see how problematic the use of ‘você’ can be and hence the emergence of possible confusions and misunderstandings.
Whether used between equals or unequals, the form ‘você’ is today an increasingly frequent treatment, but always with contradictions, being above all a question associated with the sociocultural context.
Therefore, despite being correct, the safest thing is to omit ‘você’ or replace it with the person’s name or by ‘o/a senhor’, ‘o/a chefe’, ‘o/a professor’, among others; so that you are not accused of lack of education.
