Voseo
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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, 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.
History
This pronoun comes from the Old Spanish form vos, which was the formal expression for the second person singular (in contrast with the modern usted), while vosotros was the formal expression for the second person 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 an additional second person familiar, along with or replacing 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.
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 | 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).
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 make the sound of "ash", "esh" and "osh". The sound occurs whenever there's an "i" after another vowel before the final "s", and before the consonant c, q or k.
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.
Attitudes
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 would be Guatemala or Costa Rica where 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.