tú

Dialects can be fun, even when they’re not dialects of Spanish or English. Take gallego/Galician, which is spoken in the part of Spain that sticks out above Portugal and is a dialect of Portuguese. The most famous writer in that language—though she wrote in Spanish also—was Rosalía de Castro, who lived in the 1800s. One of her poems begins like this:

Nasín cand’ as prantas nasen,
No mes das froles nasín,
Nunha alborada mainiña,
Nunha alborada d’abril.
Por eso me chaman Rosa,
Mais á do triste sorrir,
Con espiñas para todos,
Sin ningunha para ti.

With a little help, a Spanish speaker can understand it:

Nací cuando las plantas nacen,
En el mes de las flores nací,
En una alborada mansita,
En una alborada de abril.
Por eso me llaman Rosa,
Mas la del triste sonreír,
Con espinas para todos,
Sin ninguna para tí.

(Those who would like to see the rest of the poem and an English translation of it can turn to A.Z. Foreman’s blog.)

The last word in the quoted portion, ti, brings us to the subject (or should I say object?) of today’s Spanish-English word connection: the second-person singular personal pronoun. As a subject, Spanish uses tú; as the direct or indirect object of a verb, te; as the object of a pronoun, tí. English now translates them all as you, which does double duty as a plural, but English once had the singular thou and thee, which are cognates of the Spanish forms. English speakers still encounter thou and thee in literature and old versions of the Bible, but may not know when to use each one: thou serves as a subject and thee as an object.

I hope thou hast enjoyed that. See thee next time.