Spanish Dialects and Varieties - Grammar - Variation in Second-person Pronouns and Verbs

Variation in Second-person Pronouns and Verbs

Spanish is a language with a "T-V distinction" in the second person, meaning that there are different pronouns corresponding to "you" which express different degrees of formality. In most varieties, there are two degrees, namely "formal" and "familiar" (the latter is also called "informal").

For the second person formal, virtually all Spanish dialects of Spain and the Americas use usted and ustedes (singular and plural respectively). But for the second person familiar, there is regional variation—between tú and vos for the singular, and, separately, between vosotros and ustedes for the plural. The use of vos (and its corresponding verb forms) rather than tú is called voseo.

Each of the second-person pronouns has its historically corresponding verb forms, used by most speakers. Most voseo speakers use both the pronoun vos and its historically corresponding verb forms (e.g. vos tenés, "you have"). But some dialects use the pronoun tú with "vos verb forms" (verbal voseo—tú tenés), while others use vos with "tú verb forms" (pronominal voseo—vos tienes).