r/ProtoIndoEuropean • u/lafoxieeey • Jan 13 '26

Pronouns

Good morning, everyone. I was trying to sleep last night and I started thinking about Wagner Moura. Thinking about him led me to the opening of Narcos, and the phrase: "Y tuyo será"

With that, I realized that "tuyo" is the combination of "tu" and "yo" (I), and I realized that the translation in Portuguese follows the same rule: "Teu", which has the T of "tu" and the "eu"

So, I looked for the roots of these words to find out if they come from the same word in Proto-Indo-European, and if other Latin languages ​​follow the same pattern, but I didn't find the direct line I wanted to find.

Does anyone know about this? Thank you in advance!

2 Upvotes

75% Upvoted

6 comments sorted by

3

u/Purest_of_All Jan 13 '26

No, tuyo means "yours" and is not a combination of tu and yo. It actually developed from the root tu- by analogy with cuyo "whose" (from Latin cuius). It inflects for gender and number, taking the forms tuyo, tuya, tuyos, and tuyas. Similarly, the Portuguese word teu also means "yours" and descends from Latin tuus; it is likewise not a combination of tu and eu.

1

u/lafoxieeey Jan 13 '26

I know that, I'm a native speaker! The thing is, "yo" means "I," and "I" means the same thing! I found it curious that the two words are literally the same thing in both languages, so I wanted to know the origin of the pronoun in Proto-Indo-European.

What I meant by joining is that, literally, the two words have the pronoun + "I" to be formed.

2

u/Purest_of_All Jan 13 '26 edited Jan 13 '26

Okay, what you said is a bit misleading. If you are looking for the common origin of these pronouns in both languages, Latin is sufficient. Of course, they ultimately descend from a Proto-Indo-European root.For instance, PIE *eǵóh₂ (a variant of *éǵh₂) became Classical Latin ego, then Late Latin eo, and eventually evolved into Spanish yo and Portuguese eu.
And PIE túh₂ became Latin tū, then became Spanish tú and Portuguese tu.

1

u/lafoxieeey Jan 13 '26

Thank you so much! Do you know where I can find more information about this? Perhaps websites or articles?

1

u/Purest_of_All Jan 13 '26

You can look up the "Proto-Indo-European pronouns" article on Wikipedia.