Voseo
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Voseo is the use of the second person singular pronoun vos in several dialects of Spanish, instead of tú, which is often considered the standard. 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, Nicaragua, Paraguay and Uruguay, but only in Argentina, 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 the perfect example. In El Salvador, newspaper comics employ voseo, but it is hardly ever found in the narrative parts of articles, but may be found in quotations of people. 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), and in various regions of Colombia.
This pronoun comes from the Old Spanish form vos, which was the formal expression for the second person of the singular (in contrast with the modern usted), while vosotros was the formal expression for the second person of the plural. Nevertheless, vos is now an informal form, used instead of tú. During the Middle Ages the second person formal became Vuestra Merced (your grace) and vos became a second familiar second person along with or replaciong tu. This was the situation when Castilian was brought to the Rio de la Plata (Buenos Aires and Montevideo) area and Chile. In time vos lost currency in Spain but survived in Argentina and Uruguay. Vuestra Merced evolved into usted. Note that the term "vosotros" is a combined form of two words meaning literally "you others" (vos otros) while the term "nosotros" comes from the combined form of two words literally meaning "we others" (nos otros) because of the confusion caused by the change in the use of vos and tu. It seems to bear some resemblance to the use of "you all" (y'all) in the English of the Southern United States.
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 | Vosotros | Ustedes |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| hablar | "to speak" | hablas | hablás | habláis | hablan |
| comer | "to eat" | comes | comés | coméis | comen |
| poder | "to be able" | puedes | podés | podéis | pueden |
| vivir | "to live" | vives | vivís | vivís | viven |
| ser | "to be" | eres | sos | sois | son |
| venir | "to come" | vienes | venís | venís | vienen |
It should be noted that some Uruguayan speakers combine the pronoun tú with the vos conjugation (for example, tú sabés).
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.
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.
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. 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.
A similar development has occurred with você in Portuguese, which in Brazilian Portuguese is generally used as the second person singular instead of tu, more widely used in Portugal than in Brazil. However, whereas vos is not used in Spaniard Spanish, você is used in European Portuguese, similar to usted in Spanish.
See also
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