Voseo

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A movie poster for No sos vos, soy yo in Buenos Aires. The title means "It's not you, it's me."

In Spanish, voseo is the use of the second person singular pronoun vos instead of tú; tú is often considered the standard, but vos is much more common in many dialects. Vos is used extensively as the primary spoken form of the second-person singular in various countries around Latin America, including Argentina, Costa Rica, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Bolivia, Nicaragua, Paraguay, and Uruguay but only in Argentina, Costa Rica, Uruguay, and increasingly in Paraguay, is it also the standard written form. This phenomenon is also gradually taking place in Central America, where the most prestigious media are beginning to use the pronoun vos instead of tú; Nicaragua is a perfect example of this. In El Salvador, newspaper comics employ voseo, but it is hardly ever found in narrative articles outside of quotations. Increasingly, billboards and other advertising media are using voseo. In the dialect of Argentina and Uruguay (known as Rioplatense Spanish) vos is also the standard form for use in television media. Vos is present in other countries as a regionalism, for instance in the Maracucho Spanish of Zulia State, Venezuela (see Venezuelan Spanish), in Chiapas, a state in southern Mexico, and in various states in Colombia. It is also present in the Ladino dialect of Spanish, spoken by Sephardic Jews throughout Israel, Turkey, the Balkans, Morocco, Latin America and the United States.

1 History
2 Usage
3 Attitudes
4 See also
5 Sources

[edit] History

Vos was the formal second-person singular pronoun in Old Spanish, while vosotros was the formal second-person plural pronoun. Nevertheless, both are now informal pronouns, with vos being somewhat synonymous with tú in regions where both are used. During the Middle Ages, the second person formal became vuestra merced ("your grace"), and vos became an additional second person familiar, along with or replacing tú. This was the situation when Castilian was brought to the Río de la Plata area (around Buenos Aires and Montevideo), and in Chile. In time, vos lost currency in Spain but survived in Argentina and Uruguay, while Vuestra merced evolved into usted. Note that the term vosotros is a combined form of vos otros (meaning literally "you others"), while the term nosotros comes from nos otros ("we others"); otros was added to avoid confusion (in a manner similar to the formation of y'all in the English of the United States).

[edit] Usage

[edit] Conjugation with vos

Below is a comparison table of the conjugation of several verbs for tú and for vos, and next to them the one for vosotros, the informal second person plural currently used only in Spain. The accented forms (vos and vosotros) and the infinitives are stressed in the last syllable; the tú forms are stressed on the penultimate one. Note the alternations (caused by stress shift) in the roots of poder and venir.

Verb	Meaning	Tú	Vos (Argentina)	Vos (Venezuela)	Vos (Ladino)	Vosotros	Ustedes
hablar	"to speak"	hablas	hablás	habláis	fablásh	habláis	hablan
comer	"to eat"	comes	comés	coméis	comésh	coméis	comen
poder	"to be able"	puedes	podés	podéis	podésh	podéis	pueden
vivir	"to live"	vives	vivís	vivís	vivís	vivís	viven
ser	"to be"	eres	sos	sois	sosh	sois	son
venir	"to come"	vienes	venís	venís	venís	venís	vienen

It should be noted that some Uruguayan speakers combine the pronoun tú with the vos conjugation (for example, tú sabés). Conversely, speakers in some other places where both tú and vos are used combine vos with the tú conjugation (for example, vos sabes).

The verb forms employed with vos are also different in Chilean Spanish: instead of deleting i from the final diphthong, Chileans with voseo delete the final s (vos soi, vos estái). Venezuelan Maracucho Spanish, on the other hand, is notable in that it preserves the original plural verb forms, as still used with vosotros in Spain. In Ladino, the -áis, -éis, -ois endings are pronounced /aʃ/, /eʃ/, /oʃ/.

[edit] Vos as a replacement for other forms of tú

The independent accusative pronoun ti is also replaced by vos. That is, vos is both nominative and accusative, as well as the form to use after prepositions. Therefore para ti "for you" becomes para vos, etc. The preposition-pronoun compound contigo "with you" becomes con vos.

[edit] Affirmative imperative

Vos also differs in its affirmative imperative conjugation from both tú and vosotros. Specifically, the vos imperative is formed by dropping the final -r from the infinitive, but keeping the stress on the last syllable. The only verb that is irregular in this regard is ir; its vos imperative is not used, with andá (the vos imperative of andar) being used instead.

Verb	Meaning	Tú	Vos (Argentina)	Vosotros
ser	"to be"	sé	sé	sed
ir	"to go"	ve	andá	id
hablar	"to speak"	habla	hablá	hablad
comer	"to eat"	come	comé	comed
venir	"to come"	ven	vení	venid
poner	"to put"	pon	poné	poned
salir	"to leave"	sal	salí	salid

[edit] Attitudes

Voseo on El Salvador Billboard "Order your cold one here"

The pronoun vos is usually informal, like tú in other varieties of Spanish, and contrasts with the formal usted, but appropriate usage varies by dialect. In Central America, vos can be used among those considered equals; while usted holds its formal employment and tú an even more informal, quasi-inferior usage. An example widely seen in Latin America, is that most people treat each other with vos but when by chance the pronoun tú is used, it is done so when addressing children, romantic partners and even animals. In Ladino, the pronoun usted is completely absent, so the use of vos for formal situations is the standard. While vos may be considered uneducated in some dialects, it is standard in others.

Voseo was long considered a reprehensible practice by prescriptionist grammarians (with the idea that only Castilian Spanish is good Spanish), but it is now regarded simply as a local variant.