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See also: voste and vosté

Catalan

Alternative forms

Etymology

Contraction of vostra (“your”) mercè (“mercy”). First attested in the 16th century.

Pronunciation

Pronoun

vostè (strong)

  1. you (formal, singular)
    Synonyms: (common) tu, (formal) vós

Usage notes

  • Vostè is a very polite form of address for a single person. It is used with the third-person singular form of the verb. (Compare the polite usage of você in Portuguese and usted in Spanish.) Traditionally it was only used with judges, doctors, and so on, with vós being used in most polite situations, for example with elderly people, and tu being used in informal situations. Nowadays, tu is the most common form, even in formal contexts, and vostè is becoming more common than vós because of contact with Spanish. In Valencian, this word is usually spelled vosté, since it has /e/ instead of /ɛ/.

Declension

Catalan personal pronouns and clitics
strong/subject weak (direct object) weak (indirect object) possessive
proclitic enclitic proclitic enclitic
singular 1st
person 		standard jo, mi3 em, m’ -me, ’m em, m’ -me, ’m meu
majestic1 nós ens -nos, ’ns ens -nos, ’ns nostre
2nd
person 		standard tu et, t’ -te, ’t et, t’ -te, ’t teu
formal1 vós us -vos, -us us -vos, -us vostre
very formal2 vostè el, l’ -lo, ’l li -li seu
3rd
person 		m ell el, l’ -lo, ’l li -li seu
f ella la, l’4 -la li -li seu
n ho -ho li -li seu
plural
1st person nosaltres ens -nos, ’ns ens -nos, ’ns nostre
2nd
person 		standard vosaltres us -vos, -us us -vos, -us vostre
formal2 vostès els -los, ’ls els -los, ’ls seu
3rd
person 		m ells els -los, ’ls els -los, ’ls seu
f elles les -les els -los, ’ls seu
3rd person reflexive si es, s’ -se, ’s es, s’ -se, ’s seu
adverbial ablative/genitive en, n’ -ne, ’n
locative hi -hi

1 Behaves grammatically as plural.   2 Behaves grammatically as third person.
3 Only as object of a preposition.   4 Not before unstressed (h)i-, (h)u-.

References

  1. ^ “vostè”, in Gran Diccionari de la Llengua Catalana, Grup Enciclopèdia Catalana, 2025.

Further reading

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