mēs

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Latvian

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Alternative forms

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  • (dialectal, archaic form) mes

Etymology

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From earlier, and still dialectally attested, mes (with vowel lengthening, either expressively, or under the influence of jūs (you pl.)), from Proto-Indo-European *wéy (we), with the initial m- appearing due to influence from the first-person singular objective pronoun or the first-person singular verbal ending. For the non-nominative forms, the old Proto-Indo-European *nos was not conserved; new forms were created, following the second-person plural paradigm. Accusative mūs imitated second-person jūs (i.e., *múns after júns, yielding mūs); similarly genitive *mūsōn after *jūsōn, yielding mūsu, and dative mums < *mumus, paralleling jums < *jumus. Cognates include Lithuanian mẽs, Old Prussian mes, mas, Proto-Slavic *my, Old Armenian մեք (mekʻ).[1]

Pronunciation

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  • IPA(key): [mɛ̄ːs]
  • Audio:(file)

Pronoun

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mēs (personal, 1st person plural)

  1. we; first person pronoun, referring to the speaker and other people
    mēs te strādājamwe work here
    Eiropa mūs nesapratīsEurope will not understand us
    viņš dzīvo pie mumshe lives with (lit. by) us
    mēs ar Juhanu un Kārli pārnesām savu mantību uz aitu kūtiJuhans, Kārlis and I (lit. we with Juhans and Kārlis) took our possessions over to the sheep barn
    vai mūsu tauta pavisam zaudējusi balsi?has our people completely lost (its) voice?

Declension

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See also

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References

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  1. ^ Karulis, Konstantīns (1992) “mēs; mūs”, in Latviešu Etimoloģijas Vārdnīca[1] (in Latvian), Rīga: AVOTS, →ISBN