# Spanish: Origin of -y in some irregular 1st person singular



## theagx

If we remember that many Latin nouns, verb forms, adjectives, etc, ending in -us, -um, become -o in Spanish, e.g. 

Hair (n) - Latin _pilus _-> Spanish _pelo_. (i became e too)
Hand (n) - Latin _manus _-> Spanish _mano_.
Filter (n) - Latin _philtrum _-> Spanish _filtro_.
Given (participle) - Latin _datum _-> Spanish _dado_. (often Latin t's become d's in Spanish)

For most Spanish verbs, the first person singular ends in -o:

_Como _- I eat, _Bebo _- I drink, _Veo _- I see...

So now let's look at the first person singular of a few irregular verbs:

*To Be - "I am":
*
Latin: _Sum (this should have become "So" in Spanish)_
Spanish: _Soy

_*To Give - "I give":*

Latin: _Do._
Spanish: _Doy_.

And there are others like this (e.g. I go - _Voy_)

My question is: why was the -y added? Why was it applied to a few irregular verbs but not all verbs nor all irregular verbs? Is it present in Italian or Portuguese? It seems to be in first person forms with one syllable. Is this why?

In my opinion, it would make more sense to have all first person forms end in -y, to differentiate them from nouns, e.g.

registro - I register
registro - register (n).

atraco - I hold up/rob
atraco - holdup/robbery (n)


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## ernest_

A quote from Spanish Phonology by I.R.Macpherson:

The offglide of _hay_ /aj/ originated in the Classical Latin adverb IBI: HA(BET) + IBI > _hay_. Possibly by analogy with _hay_, the offglide was extended to the first person singular of _ser_, _estar_, _ir_, and _dar_ during the late medieval period: SŬM > _so_ > _soy_, STO > _estó_ > _estoy_, VO > _vo_ > _voy_, DO > _do_ > _doy_.


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## Nino83

theagx said:


> Is it present in Italian or Portuguese?



No, it isn't.


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## fdb

I have read this theory too, but there must be a better explanation. Why should the -y of the third person singular of one verb migrate to the first person singular of four different verbs?


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## MarcB

Theagx, I can relate that in Portuguese those same verbs are irregular but dealt with differently. The normal first person singular is o like Spanish but usually pronounced oo as in English too not toe. For the irregular verbs we have:Sou,Dou,Vou. I don't know if that helps.


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## Cenzontle

Penny (2002: 191) says "the change _so_ > _soy_ has received no definitive explanation" 
and "Many explanations have been given for this change, but none is totally convincing."
He adds "Paul Lloyd reasonably concludes, after a minute discussion of the theories on offer (1993: 565-70) [p. 358 of the 1987 edition],
that the addition of -_y_ (probably < ĬBĪ) served to clarify the distinction between the _-ó_ of the preterite and these present-tense forms, which also ended in _-ó."
_Lloyd says "soy" became widely used in the 14th century.


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## theagx

ernest_ said:


> A quote from Spanish Phonology by I.R.Macpherson:
> 
> The offglide of _hay_ /aj/ originated in the Classical Latin adverb IBI: HA(BET) + IBI > _hay_. Possibly by analogy with _hay_, the offglide was extended to the first person singular of _ser_, _estar_, _ir_, and _dar_ during the late medieval period: SŬM > _so_ > _soy_, STO > _estó_ > _estoy_, VO > _vo_ > _voy_, DO > _do_ > _doy_.



Thanks for the reply. This doesn't explain why this would occur though. Why would Haber or Hay have anything to do with the first person singular of unrelated verbs.


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## Cenzontle

> Why would Haber or Hay have anything to do with the first person singular of unrelated verbs.


Right.  That's why my favorite theory is that the final "-y" of "soy" etc. is in anticipation of the initial "y-" of "yo" in the inverted "so[y] yo".
This theory -- not original with me, but I can't remember the source -- has the advantage 
that the "-y" doesn't have to make semantic sense  as < IBI ('there').
I'd like to be able to find data to show that the soy/voy/estoy/doy forms show up first in the inverted construction
and later spread to the construction in "yo" + verb order, and/or the no-pronoun context.
Whatever the cause, it must have been powerful, given that these are among the most frequent verbs in the language.
P.S.:  Also, the "y-" of the following "yo" is something that Portuguese doesn't have (_eu_ = 'I'), which "explains" why nothing similar to Sp. "-oy" happened in Port.


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## theagx

MarcB said:


> Theagx, I can relate that in Portuguese those same verbs are irregular but dealt with differently. The normal first person singular is o like Spanish but usually pronounced oo as in English too not toe. For the irregular verbs we have:Sou,Dou,Vou. I don't know if that helps.



That is interesting.

Spa Ptg

HABLAR: Hablo - FALAR: Falo (TO SPEAK: I speak) -- regular first person sing.
but
IR: Voy - IR: Vou
DAR: Doy - DAR: Dou
SER: Soy - SER: Sou

I don't speak Portuguese so some of the above is bound to be wrong, but you get my point.

Does pt have a verb like "ESTAR" (Sp)? Is the 1st person sing. Estou???

I think I remember there being an ESTAR/estou in pt...


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## Nino83

theagx said:


> Is the 1st person sing. Estou???



Yes, it is. You can add it to the list.


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## Cenzontle

> I'd like to be able to find data to show that the soy/voy/estoy/doy forms show up first in the inverted construction
> and later spread to the construction in "yo" + verb order


But unfortunately the data I found don't support the "so[y] yo" theory (but they don't disprove it, either).
I extracted data from Prof. Davies's Corpus del Español for the 13th, 14th, and 15th centuries, for _ser_, _estar_, _ir_, and _dar_.  
I figured a "percentage of innovation" — the number of "-oy" forms divided by the sum of the "-oy" and the "-o" forms — 
to compare the "normal" (pron. + v.) order with the "inverted" order (v. + pron.).  
The percentage of "-oy" forms in the inverted construction is far less than that in the pron. + v. construction, for each century.  
The "-oy" innovation in the "-o[y] yo" construction doesn't lead, it lags.  
This relationship holds true even when you omit "estar" and "dar" and look only at "ser" and "ir".  
(Why omit "estar"?  Because "esto" has other functions, so, for example, you get things like "a pesar de esto[,] yo...".  
And likewise for "dar", since "do" in Old Spanish can double for "donde", as in "alla do yo moro" 'there where I live'.)


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## ernest_

theagx said:


> Thanks for the reply. This doesn't explain why this would occur though. Why would Haber or Hay have anything to do with the first person singular of unrelated verbs.


I am not a linguist myself but my understanding is that the hypothesis here is that the change _ha_ > _hay_ is extended by phonetic analogy to other words. It makes sense to me. The affected words all appear to be monosyllabic and end with a monophthong, except for _estoy_, which would require a separate explanation (perhaps the fact that _ser_ and _estar_ are closely related to each other).


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## Angelo di fuoco

Estoy has the stress on the last syllable, like the other three.


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## relativamente

In Catalan there is a final c instead of Spanish y, at least in verbs ser "jo soc" and estar "jo estic".


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## Angelo di fuoco

It's true, but the -c is a rather late feature. I'm reading "Tirant lo Blanc" right now and there's no final c in the 1st person singular present of ésser or dar (it wasn't yet a defective verb in the 15th century, it appears), the 1st person singular present of ir/anar is vo, not *voc or vaig. I'm more or less through half of the novel (400 of the roughly 1000 pages) and have yet to encounter the 1st person singular present of estar


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## Cossue

As stated by MarcB, in Galician and Portuguese forms like (_eu_) _so*u*_, _esto*u*_, _do*u*_, _vo*u*_ are already there since the first medieval documents from the very beginning of the 13th century. I suspect that they are the same animal.


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## merquiades

From my notes from my history of the Spanish language class at the Madrid Complutense University:

I translate:

The first person singular form of the present tense of _dar, ser, ir _and _estar_ as well as impersonal _haber _evolved from vulgar Latin into Castilian as normal _do, so, vo, estó_ and _ha_.  After the 13th century, they started to be used routinely with the locative complement _y, i_ or sometimes _hi_ or _hy_ deriving from _ibi_ (there).  This particle was often used with other verbs as well in the same way as modern French uses _y_, but this mechanism grew archaic and inactive over time.  By the 16th century _y_ was no longer used in the language, however it became compulsory and affixed to the five aforementioned verbs which by that time no longer existed in the common language without _y_. The forms became dissociated with _y_ (there) which hitherto needed to be expressed by _ahí_:  ex) Voy ahí.

Examples from Medieval Spanish:

Do y la otra heredat a este monesterio.
Ha hi veinte vaccas.
Vo hy donde vos.


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## francisgranada

Cossue said:


> As stated by MarcB, in Galician and Portuguese forms like (_eu_) _so*u*_, _esto*u*_, _do*u*_, _vo*u*_ are already there since the first medieval documents from the very beginning of the 13th century. I suspect that they are the same animal.


I also think that they are somehow of the same origin as the Spanish _soy, estoy, doy, voy_. Can we exclude that this -u comes also from the Latin ibi? For example - more or less - the following way: so ibi > so ivi > so'vi > sov > sou ... 


Angelo di fuoco said:


> Estoy has the stress on the last syllable, like the other three.


And more, the initial _e-_ is a secondary element (v. Lat. _stare_).  

P.S. Interestingly, the French _suis _also contains an "unexpected" _-i- ..._


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## fdb

Cenzontle said:


> Penny (2002: 191) says "the change _so_ > _soy_ has received no definitive explanation"
> and "Many explanations have been given for this change, but none is totally convincing."
> He adds "Paul Lloyd reasonably concludes, after a minute discussion of the theories on offer (1993: 565-70) [p. 358 of the 1987 edition], that the addition of -_y_ (probably < ĬBĪ) served to clarify the distinction between the _-ó_ of the preterite and these present-tense forms, which also ended in _-ó."
> _Lloyd says "soy" became widely used in the 14th century.



I think that Penny is refreshingly cautious about this issue. If it is really a question of disambiguating the homophony of the present and past tenses, why does the present tense acquire an ending supposedly deriving from a distant-deixis adverb (ibi = there)? Would one not expect rather a derivative of a near-deixis adverb (hic = here) in the present tense?


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## francisgranada

Further more, there's no problem with the homophony of the 1st pers. plural _amamos _(presente) and _amamos _(pretérito perfecto) in case of all the regular verbs in -ar ... Plus, the verbs_ dar, ir, estar and ser_ are irregular in the preterite and no _dó, vó, estó and só_ forms do exist in the preterite.


fdb said:


> ... Would one not expect rather a derivative of a near-deixis adverb (hic = here) in the present tense?


A propos, are we sure that this_ -y (< y, hi, hy)_ comes from_ ibi_ and not from_ hic_?


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## merquiades

francisgranada said:


> I also think that they are somehow of the same origin as the Spanish _soy, estoy, doy, voy_. Can we exclude that this -u comes also from the Latin ibi? For example - more or less - the following way: so ibi > so ivi > so'vi > sov > sou ...
> And more, the initial _e-_ is a secondary element (v. Lat. _stare_).





> A propos, are we sure that this -y (< y, hi, hy) comes from ibi and not from hic?



Normally, the intervocalic * was lost over time.  For "ibi" to become [w] in Portuguese the two i-vowels would have had to be absorbed.  This usually didn't happen.  
Perhaps the fact this final [o] was stressed favored creating the diphthong.  The stressed preterite third person singular ending always has "ou" in Portuguese (falou, cantou, acabou) but "ó" in Spanish.  
Most theories give "ibi" as the origin, but just maybe the medieval scholars confused "ibi" and "hic".  This could account for the "hi/hy" spelling being sometimes preferred over "y/i". 



			P.S. Interestingly, the French suis also contains an "unexpected" -i- ...

Click to expand...

Yes, this is indeed interesting.  I had never thought about that.  Perhaps someone knows the evolution of "je suis" from "ego sum".*


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## Cenzontle

> Can we exclude that this [Portuguese/Galician] -u comes also from the Latin ibi? For example - more or less - the following way: so ibi > so ivi > so'vi > sov > sou ...


At the risk of going off on a Portuguese tangent...
One would think that Latin SUM, DŌ, STŌ should have given Port. _sô, dô, estô_ — except that there were no other words developing a final -_ô _to help that seem natural.
The closest thing to it was the -_ou_ of the preterit -_ar_ verbs (_falou, chegou_, etc.).
Meanwhile, Latin VADŌ > vao > vau > vou might have paved the way for the other three verbs?  Speculation on my part.


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## francisgranada

merquiades said:


> ...Perhaps the fact this final [o] was stressed favored creating the diphthong. The stressed preterite third person singular ending always has "ou" in Portuguese (falou, cantou, acabou) but "ó" in Spanish.


 Yes, but on the other hand the Portuguese tends to maintain the diphthong _ou_ (< Lat. _au_), so this -_ou _in _cantou _etc. could also be "original", i.e. not a secondary evolution from a former stressed -_ó_. If so, then the Lat. _cantavit _developped regularly into _cantou _in Portuguese and _cantò/cantó _in Italian/Spanish through a common intermediate form  *_cantau _(< *_cantave ? _< _cantavit_), the same way as e.g. the Port. _ouro _and It./Sp. _oro _from Lat. _aurum.

_In case of _dou/vou/sou/estou_, my idea was to suppose a former unstressed_ *[wi/we] (_< Lat._ ibi, _see also It. _vi/ve_, Aragonese _bi/be_), which when pronounced after a preceding stressed "_o_" developped in _u_. (Not very convincing, I know, but perhaps not impossible ...).


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## Angelo di fuoco

Cenzontle said:


> At the risk of going off on a Portuguese tangent...
> One would think that Latin SUM, DŌ, STŌ should have given Port. _sô, dô, estô_ — except that there were no other words developing a final -_ô _to help that seem natural.
> The closest thing to it was the -_ou_ of the preterit -_ar_ verbs (_falou, chegou_, etc.).
> Meanwhile, Latin VADŌ > vao > vau > vou might have paved the way for the other three verbs?  Speculation on my part.



Monosyllabic words often behave in their own way... I think dou, sou, estou developed via analogy, not because of intrinsic changes in phonology.
As Francisgranada points out, Classic Latin au gives Vulgar Latin o (in Standard Italian, open o), but this whole au-o-ou/oi business in Medieval Romance languages is rather messy. The form cantau is to be supposes, since the Latin form was not cantavit, but actually cantauit, with a short u, and both Catalan and French (I don't know about Occitan) have cantà or, respectively, chanta - no diphtong, no monophtongation, just truncation.
Another thing is that, in Portuguese, their's are many doublets of ou/oi, some of which grew out of au: loiro & louro (no analogy in Spanish, cousa & coisa (cosa), louça & loiça (loza) etc. So in Portuguese this leaves us with the - theoretical - chance of doublets like vou & *voi, dou & *doi, estou & *estoi, sou & *soi. Or am I wrong?
Medieval (and partially, contemporary) Catalan is even more messy, since there is the opposite development: ofegar (to drown sb.) in some dialects is aufegar (in Spanish, its ahogar, in Italian, it's affogare). Moreover, unstressed vowels are often unstable: e. g. Octavian is more often than not spelt Octovià (there are other cases, but I just don't remember any right now), whereas opinion is openió (once again, there are more cases like this).


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## hadronic

As already noted, French has "je suis" but also "je vais"...
It looks like Old French never used verb "dare" but "donare", so that one is missing.


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## mataripis

I think it is common rule in Spanish verb that has only 2 or 3 letters. That y I believe is the gamma/yamma of greek probably during the times greeks migrated to iberia peninsula they influenced the development of Espaniol. Ego of greek become yo in spanish.I noticed the presence of g and c in some verbs and this maybe the reason why there is no need for y to appear in their conjugation.


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## francisgranada

hadronic said:


> As already noted, French has "je suis" but also "je vais"...
> It looks like Old French never used verb "dare" but "donare", so that one is missing.


Yes, but we have also _je fa*i*s_ and maybe other verbs, too. However, there is a difference: in case of _faire_ this _-i-_  appears also in the infinitive and in other persons (_tu fait, il fait _...) while in case of _je vais_ and _je suis_ only in the 1st pers. sg. (as in Spanish).


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## francisgranada

Hello!

Grammatically the Spanish "hay" is the impersonal form of 3rd. pers. singular of the verb _haber_. 

The question is, what is the origin or etymology of this "-*y*" at the end of "hay" ?


(In old Spanish there existed an adverb "y" (<Latin _ibi_) with the meaning of "there". So _hay < ha y,_ in the meaning of "there has / there is", in theory could be the explanation. But this is only my personal idea as I have not yet found any explanation, including DRAE).  

Gracias de antemano!


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## AndrasBP

Szia! 

I thought this thread would be about a type of dried grass. 

According to Wiktionary, your theory is correct:

"From Old Spanish _ha ý_ (“it has there”) (compare Catalan _hi ha_ and French _il y a_), from _ha_, third-person singular present of _aver_ (“to have”), + _ý_, from Latin _ibī_ (“there”)."


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## bearded

francisgranada said:


> in theory could be the explanation


Hello Francis
No doubt that it *is *the correct explanation.
Cf. here:


> Etymology
> From Old Spanish ha ý (“it has there”) (compare Catalan hi ha and French il y a), from ha, third-person singular present of aver (“to have”), + ý, from Latin ibī (“there”).


--cross-posted with AndrasBP--


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## francisgranada

Szia AndasBP and ciao bearded !

I am glad to see you both on same forum ... 

(I was probably influenced by the fact that DRAE doesn't give any explanation and because this _-y_ appears also in 1st. pers. sg. of some verbs like _soy, doy, estoy, voy_)

_Gracias _for your interest and for the positive answers


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## Penyafort

In the case of _hay_, I also consider the _y_ from IBI as the most plausible origin.

For the first person of _ser, dar, estar, ir_, it's not so clear and only one of several theories. What I see as the likeliest here is the soy resulting from common medieval inversion (_so yo_ > /soj jo/), probably influenced by the existence of a form with -y like _hay_, later spreading to the other common short forms of _do, esto, vo_.


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## Sobakus

There was a thread on this almost full 8 years ago: Spanish: Origin of -y in some irregular 1st person singular. Though it has “1st person” in the title, the discussion includes _hay_ as well – it seems the two will inevitably be discussed together. I'm not sure where to continue which discussion, to be honest – perhaps the two threads need to be joined together?


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