A SUGGESTION FOR TEACHING THE SPANISH TUTEO

The problem of how to approach the teaching of the varied Spanish equivalents of our second person address form, you, has disturbed English-speaking students of Spanish and their teachers ever since our language lost the contrast in everyday usage between thou , the intimate and familiar form of address, and you, the polite and respectful form. Centuries ago our linguistic ancestors had in their own language patterns a convenient bridge over which they could pass to an understanding of the Spanish contrast between td, intimate and familiar, and usted, polite and respectful. The gulf that separates our contemporary usage from the ustedl't; usage in Spanish seems less serious in the case of u s t e d than in the case of t u , the stranger of the two forms. A s generally happens in other cases where two contrasting forms in Spanish a re equivalent to a single English form, e . g . : por , para and s e r estar, the stranger and, as here expressed, the second of the two forms tends to be over-used by students. In view of this experience noted by many Spanish teachers the most satisfactory approach to this "two-for-one" type problem would appear to be one based on a careful analysis of the more troublesome or stranger member of the individual contrasting pairs, p a r a , es t a r , and t;. The use of td and its galaxy or set of attendant forms (subject, object and possessive pronouns, finite verb forms, possessive adjectives, e tc . ) , all of which correspond to ,a behavior pattern of classifying and modifying speech usgage in contacts with other human beings, is called the t u t e o in Spanish. The presentation of this feature to English speakers has been accomplished o r avoided in a variety of linguistically unsound ways. The purpose of this study is to summarize and criticize the commonly used approaches to the problem of teaching the Spanish tuteoand to offer suggestions for an improved approach.