Between “I” and “we”, I prefer “we”.
The Venezuelan philologist Andres Bello He wrote that grammar allows us to find out what is happening in the soul of the speaker. And the same thing does not happen in the soul of those who choose the first person singular as in the soul of those who prefer its plural.
Carlos Alcaraz declared on June 2, after beating the Canadian Felix Auger-Aliassime at Roland Garros: “A Grand Slam quarterfinal is a very good result, but if we think it is a good result we are left with a mediocre player. (…) We reached the quarterfinals and we are already thinking about what we can do to reach the semis.”
The Murcian tennis player speaks in plural as part of a team (coach, doctor, physiotherapist, agent…); and use the us implicit even if only he holds the racket and even if the concordances of his statement produce some incoherence (“if we think it is a good result we are left with a mediocre player”).
Many years before, the cyclist Perico Delgado was already systematically resorting to that formula: “Today we can become leaders in the general classification,” he declared despite the fact that the Tour leader was only one. And Miguel Induráin continued down that path: “We had some difficulty on the slope, but then we recovered.” In a time trial stage! Neither one nor the other expressed a plural of modesty (which avoids highlighting the I) nor a sociative plural (the one that encompasses the interlocutor), but the plural of someone who wishes to share an individual merit with other people. A strategic plural.
The Tour is won by a single runner, a single tennis player wins at Roland Garros, but they will always need the support and faith of a team.
Dani Carvajal and Nacho Fernández, captains of Madrid, spoke In us after winning the last European Cup. Six years ago, Cristiano Ronaldo did it in me
These subtleties can also be appreciated in everyday life. There are those who respond to their friends when they are interested in where they were on vacation: “I went to Cancun.” However, perhaps her companion will answer a similar question in the office: “We went to Cancun.” Both traveled with different grammatical souls.
The Cuban musician Pedro Junco created the bolero Us 81 years ago, when he was barely 23. He had been rushed from Pinar del Río to a hospital in Havana due to respiratory problems that were feared to be tuberculosis, which was incurable at the time. He could never see her beloved again, so as not to infect her. The days went by and he couldn’t find a way to communicate her absence because they both had a secret relationship in front of everyone, due to the opposition of her family. If he wrote to her, her father would intercept the letter. So he decided to create a song and ask the performer Tony Chiroldes to present it on the local radio program that the young woman listened to every night; and, logically, to mention him as the author. In this way, the bolero that they would later record The Panchos either Luis Miguel It was heard for the first time on April 25, 1943 at the Pinar del Río Radio Station: “We, who love each other so much, must separate, don’t ask me again.” (…) “I swear to you that I adore you, and in the name of this love and for your good I say goodbye to you. Us…”.
The woman finally found out what was happening and went to the hospital. There they told him that Junco had just died. She was left with that as an inheritance. us who survived his death. A pronoun that sometimes beats strongly in the depths of our grammatical soul.
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