# Me/mi, Se/si, Te/ti of Spanish and Italian



## bubbyx

I've noticed an interesting phenomenon in Spanish and Italian that when it's te in spanish, it's ti in italian and vice versa, like Spanish Te Amo vs Italian Ti Amo and Spanish A ti vs Italian A te. This is the same for me and mi, a mi in Spanish and a me in italian. The Spanish say me interesa and the Italians m'interessa (from mi interessa) Then also for si and se, the Spanish say como se dice and the Italians say come si dice. The spanish say si for if and the italians se.

It seems like there is a pattern of e and i in Italian and Spanish, like when it's i in spanish it's e in italian and vice versa.

Can someone explain to me this pattern? I'm sure it has to do with how they evolved from latin.

Thank you!


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## Rubns

No worder, both languages derive from the same root


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## bubbyx

Yes I know that they both came from latin. I just want to know why there is a pattern  like that


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## Diágoras

Bubbyx, in Latin it was used "me, te, se". In Spanish we took them just like that. In Italian they were transformed in "mi, ti, si" because of phonetic changes due to the combination of Latin with other languages that were spoken in the different regions. In French, another language derived from Latin, you also have "Je ME rappelle", "Tu TE rappelles", "Il/Elle SE rappelle".


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## bubbyx

Wow thank you Diágoras, what about the me te se of italian? Where did the me te se of Italian and the mi ti si of Spanish come from?


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## Diágoras

You're welcome. Me, te, se, are Spanish and mi, ti, si, Italian. 
In Latin you had the personal pronoun "ego" (English I) which, in its accusative case, was "me" (English me). From that came Spanish and French "me", and Italian "mi". In fact, English "me" is the same, although it arrived there from another route, from a germanic route. That is because both Old German and Latin come from a unique common language (unknown, but inferred) which is called "Indo-European". The mother of all germanic, latin, greek and other groups of languages.

Sorry for the philological digression, I hope there was something interesting in all that.


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## bubbyx

But doesn't spanish also have mi to and si and italian me te and se?


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## Diágoras

In Spanish we have "mí" but that is the dative case, not the accusative. I don't know Italian, so I can't answer you the second part. You asked for the accusatives. The important thing here is that there was in Indo-European something which we ignore from which they came "me" in Latin, Spanish, French, English, etc. and also "mi" in Italian, which is exactly the same but with another pronunciation.


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## berndf

Moderator note: Moved to EHL.


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## fdb

I think this is a very good question, but you have had very bad answers until now. Let me try to do a bit better. The problem is that Latin me, te, se develop differently in stressed and in unstressed positions. In French we say “il me donne le livre”, but “donnez moi le livre”. In Italian unstressed me become mi, but stressed me becomes me. In Spanish it is the other way around.


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## fdb

Diágoras said:


> The important thing here is that there was in Indo-European something which we ignore from which they came "me" in Latin, Spanish, French, English, etc. and also "mi" in Italian, which is exactly the same but with another pronunciation.



If you are suggesting that Italian "mi" comes not from Latin but  directly from Indo-European then you are severely deluded. And if  something has "another pronunciation" then it is not "exactly the same",  is it?


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## berndf

Diágoras said:


> The important thing here is that there was in Indo-European something which we ignore from which they came "me" in Latin, Spanish, French, English, etc. and also "mi" in Italian, which is exactly the same but with another pronunciation.


There is nothing obscure there and nothing where you need to go back to any "Indo-European something". Alterations between <i> and <e> in words that had a short <i> or a long <e> in Latin are a simple consequence of the loss of phonemic vowel length in Vulgar Latin. After all we know, Latin vowels must have sounded approximately like German vowels in stressed syllables, except that German has two additional long ([ø:] and [y:]) and two additional short vowels ([œ] and [ʏ]). If you take a short <i> ([ɪ]) and a long <e> ([e:]) and pronounce them with the same length, they become extremely difficult to distinguish, almost impossible for me as a German and I would often confuse them. Something similar happened in Vulgar Latin as well.


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## MarcB

In Portuguese another closely related language the spelling is me, te ,se, as in Spanish but pronunciation is either like Italian mi,ti,si or French me.te. se. Pronunciation is regional.


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## Nino83

fdb's answer is the right one. 
The difference is between unstressed (proclitic) and stressed (after prepositions) pronouns. 
In Latin there was _mihi_ (to me) and _me_ (me) and _tibi_ (to you) and _te_ (you). 
In Romance languages dative (to me, to you) and accusative case (me, you) merged (unless the pronoun is in third person, _lo/la/le/li/le/les/los/las_ accusative and _gli/le/loro/lui/leur/le/les/lhe/lhes_ dative) and only accusative case remained. These pronouns can be used before the verb or after a preposition. 

_Mi ha detto = Ha detto a me._ 
_Il m'a dit (me) = Il a dit à moi. 
Me ha dicho = Ha dicho a mi. 
Me disse (disse-me) = Disse a mim. 
He told me. 
_
I don't know how this difference in pronunciation developed. 

EDIT: 

Pay attention. In Italian when there is _mi/ti/ci/vi_ (dative) + _lo/la/gli/le_ (accusative), we write (and say) _me lo, te lo, ce lo, ve lo_. In Portuguese _me/te/nos/vos + o/a/os/as = mo/to/no-lo/vo-lo_. 

Example: 
_Me l'ha detto. (mi + lo = me lo)
Il me l'a dit. 
Me lo ha dicho. 
Mo disse, disse-mo (me + o = mo) 


_


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## CapnPrep

Nino83 said:


> The difference is between unstressed (proclitic) and stressed (after prepositions) pronouns.


It is more complicated than that in Italian, as your examples _me lo_, _te lo_, etc. show. And it is not enough to say simply that there was confusion between [ɪ] and [e] (as berndf mentioned), since the outcomes are not haphazard, but quite systematic. In fact, the merger of VL _ĭ_ and _ē_ (and unstressed _ĕ_) is regularly resolved in favor of [e], and so cases where we find _ in Romance require some additional explanation.   


Nino83 said:



			In Romance languages dative (to me, to you) and accusative case (me, you) merged […] and only accusative case remained. These pronouns can be used before the verb or after a preposition.

Mi ha detto = Ha detto a me. […]
Me ha dicho = Ha dicho a mi.
[…]
I don't know how this difference in pronunciation developed.
		
Click to expand...

The post-prepositional forms mí, ti, and sí come from the Latin dative forms mihi, tibi, and sibi, which evidently did not merge with the accusative in this context in Spanish. The vowel  can be explained either by contraction (mĭhi > mī) or by metaphony (assuming a final long ī in mĭhī, tĭbī, sĭbī).

The  in the Italian forms is an example of a Tuscan dialectal tendency to raise [e] to  in pretonic syllables, found not only in some proclitic forms, but also in many ordinary polysyllabic roots: m*ĕ*liore(m) > m*i*gliore, s*ĕ*niore(m) > s*i*gnore, s*ē*curu(m) > s*i*curo, etc. In sequences of pronouns like m*e* lo, t*e* lo, etc., the first syllable may have received enough stress to prevent this raising (cf. the preposition d*i*, but d*e*llo, d*e*lla, etc.). Pretonic raising obviously cannot explain the  in post-verbal pronouns like dimm*i*, dirm*i* ; I suppose this is analogical._


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## berndf

CapnPrep said:


> And it is not enough to say simply that there was confusion between [ɪ] and [e] (as berndf mentioned)..


Yes of course, and I didn't say anything that would imply it was. I just said that there was a simple phonetic trigger for the i/e rearrangements and that we don't need "in Indo-European something which we ignore" as it was claimed.


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## jasio

CapnPrep said:


> The _ in the Italian forms is an example of a Tuscan dialectal tendency_


_

I'm not specialist in Romance linguistics, but couldn't it be a result of a selection of the specific roots of what we call modern languages? I mean, people might have spoken a whole range of various dialects, having a whole range of phonetic, syntactic etc. phenomenons, perhaps intermixed village-to-village or valley-to-valley. When later 'languages' were created, for one reason or another, a certain region was selected as a source of the 'official' pronunciation (syntax, vocabulary, etc), while the other alternatives were then diminished as 'regional or dialectical'? In Italian it would be an educated Tuscan dialect, in French - educated Paris, in Spanish - I do not know, perhaps educated Madrid, and so forth. In that case, a specific regional feature or a more or less random combination of features would be "frozen" in a language and then promoted as 'the only proper' by mass-media?

In such case the answer to the question "why 'e' and 'i' seem to be swapped between Spanish and Italian" would in fact be: because they were specific features of the Tuscan vs. Castillan pronuciation x centuries ago._


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