Why Some Colombians Call Their Mothers ‘Your Mercy’
Two centuries after independence from Spain, many Colombians still use “sumercé,” meaning “your mercy” as an everyday address.
By Julie Turkewitz
In Bogotá, a city of eight million people nestled in the Andes Mountains, “sumercé” is ubiquitous, deployed not just by taxi drivers and shopkeepers to attend to clients (how can I help your mercy?), but also by children to refer to parents, parents to refer to children, and (sometimes with tender irony) even by husbands, wives and lovers to refer to each other (“would your mercy pass the salt?” or “your mercy, what do you think, should I wear these pants today?”).
It is used by the young and old, by urbanites and rural transplants, by Bogotá’s most recent past mayor (“trabaje juiciosa, sumercé!” she was once caught on camera yelling at a street vendor, “get to work, your mercy!”), and even by the front woman for one of the country’s best-known rock bands, Andrea Echeverri of Aterciopelados.
www.nytimes.com/2024/03/02/world/americas/colombia-sumerce-mothers-mercy.html