Spanish Grammar - Dialectal Variations - Forms of Address - Voseo

Voseo

Vos was used in medieval Castilian as a polite form, like the French vous and the Italian voi, and it used the same forms as vosotros. This gave three levels of formality:

• Tú quieres
• Vos queréis (originally queredes)
• Vuestra merced quiere (today usted)

Whereas vos was lost in standard Spanish, some dialects lost tú, and began using vos as the informal pronoun. The exact connotations of this practice, called voseo, depend on the dialect. In certain countries there may be socioeconomic impliactions. El voseo uses the pronoun vos for tú, but maintains te as an object pronoun and tu and tuyo as possessives.

In voseo, verbs corresponding to vos in the present indicative (roughly equivalent to the English simple present), are formed from the second person plural (the form for vosotros). If the second person plural ends in áis or éis, the form for vos drops the i:

• Vosotros habláis - vos hablás.
• Vosotros tenéis - vos tenés.

Similarly the verb ser (to be) has:

• Vosotros sois - vos sos.

If the second person plural ends in -ís (with an accent on the í), then the form for vos is identical:

• Vosotros vivís - vos vivís.
• Vosotros oís - vos oís.
• Vosotros huís - vos huís.

In the imperative, the form for vos is also derived from the second person plural. The latter ends always in -d. So for the form for vos this d is removed, and if the verb has more than one syllable, an accent is added to the last vowel:

• Tened (vosotros) - tené (vos)
• Dad (vosotros) - da (vos).

The only exception to these rules is in the verb ir (to go), which does not have an imperative form for vos and uses the analogous form of the verb andar, which has a similar meaning, and is regular:

• Andad - andá.

In the present subjunctive, the same rules as for the present indicative apply, though these forms coexist in Argentina with those for the pronoun tú:

• Que vosotros digáis - que vos digás.

OR

• Que tú digas - que vos digas.

Other tenses always have the same form for vos as for tú.

Outside Argentina, other combinations are possible. For instance, people in Maracaibo may use standard vosotros endings for vos (vos habláis, que vos habléis).