Forms of Address
The use of usted and ustedes as a polite form of address is universal. However, there are variations in informal address. Ustedes replaces vosotros in much of Andalusia, the Canary Islands and Latin America, except in the liturgical or poetic of styles. In some parts of Andalusia, the pronoun ustedes is used with the standard vosotros endings.
Depending on the region, Latin Americans may also replace the singular tú with usted or vos. The choice of pronoun is a tricky issue and can even vary from village to village. Travellers are often advised to play it safe and call everyone usted.
A feature of the speech of the Dominican Republic and other areas where syllable-final /s/ is completely silent is that there is no audible difference between the second and third person singular form of the verb. This leads to redundant pronoun use, for example, the tagging on of ¿tú ves? (pronounced tuvé) to the ends of sentences, where other speakers would say ¿ves?.
Read more about this topic: Spanish Grammar, Dialectal Variations
Famous quotes containing the words forms of, forms and/or address:
“The poets eye, in a fine frenzy rolling,
Doth glance from heaven to earth, from earth to heaven;
And as imagination bodies forth
The forms of things unknown, the poets pen
Turns them to shapes, and gives to airy nothing
A local habitation and a name.”
—William Shakespeare (15641616)
“You may melt your metals and cast them into the most beautiful moulds you can; they will never excite me like the forms which this molten earth flows out into. And not only it, but the institutions upon it are plastic like clay in the hands of the potter.”
—Henry David Thoreau (18171862)
“If you address a ghost as Thing!
Or strike him with a hatchet,
He is permitted by the King
To drop all formal parleying
And then youre sure to catch it!”
—Lewis Carroll [Charles Lutwidge Dodgson] (18321898)