Voseo


In Spanish grammar, voseo is the use of vos as a second-person singular pronoun, including its conjugational verb forms in many dialects. In dialects that have it, it is used either instead of tú, or alongside it. Voseo is seldom taught to students of Spanish as a second language, and its precise usage varies across different regions. Nevertheless, in recent years it has become more accepted across the Spanish-speaking world as a valid part of regional dialects. Use of tú for the second-person singular is known as tuteo.
The voseo was the predominant form of second-person address for politeness or social distance when the discovery and conquest of America took place in late 15th and early 16th centuries, but soon after tuteo became more widely used and prescribed in colonial centers and in Spain. More peripheral areas of the Spanish Empire continued using voseo up until the present day.
Vos is used extensively as the second-person singular in Rioplatense Spanish, Eastern Bolivia, Paraguayan Spanish, and Central American Spanish.
Vos had been traditionally used even in formal writing in Argentina, El Salvador, Costa Rica, Nicaragua, Paraguay and Uruguay. In the dialect of Argentina, Paraguay and Uruguay, vos is also the standard form of use, even in mainstream media; in Argentina, particularly since the last years of the 20th century, it is very common to see billboards and other advertising media using voseo.
Vos is present in other countries as a regionalism, for instance in the Maracucho Spanish of Zulia State, Venezuela, in the Azuero peninsula of Panama, in various departments in Colombia, and in parts of Ecuador. In Peru, voseo is present in some Andean regions and Cajamarca, but the younger generations have ceased to use it. It is also present in Ladino, where it replaces usted. In the United States, Salvadoran Americans are by far the largest voseo users followed by other Central Americans, including Guatemalans, Hondurans, Nicaraguans, and Costa Ricans.
Voseo can also be found in the context of using verb conjugations for vos with tú as the subject pronoun, as in the case of Chilean Spanish, where this form coexists with the ordinary form of voseo.
It has been claimed that the countries that use voseo today have in common that they were geographically isolated during colonial times; regions with good communications with Spain at that time—today's Mexico, Cuba, Puerto Rico, Dominican Republic, and Peru—do not use voseo, or its use is confined to remote areas—this is the case in Venezuela, Colombia, Panama, and Ecuador. In colonial times, there was, by law, no regular boat communication between today's Argentina and Spain.

History

Originally a second-person plural, Vos came to be used as a more polite second-person singular pronoun to be used among one's familiar friends. The following extract from a late-18th century textbook is illustrative of usage at the time:
The standard formal way to address a person one was not on familiar terms with was to address such a person as vuestra merced in the singular and vuestras mercedes in the plural. Because of the literal meaning of these forms, they were accompanied by the corresponding third-person verb forms. Other formal forms of address included vuestra excelencia and vuestra señoría. Today, both vos and tú are considered to be informal pronouns, with vos being somewhat synonymous with tú in regions where both are used. This was the situation when the Spanish language was brought to the Río de la Plata area and to Chile.
In time, vos lost currency in Spain but survived in a number of areas in Spanish-speaking America: Argentina, Paraguay, Bolivia, Uruguay, El Salvador, Honduras, Costa Rica, Guatemala, Nicaragua, and some smaller areas; it is not found, or only found in internally remote areas in the countries historically best connected with Spain: Mexico, Panama, Cuba, the Dominican Republic, Venezuela, Colombia, Perú, and Equatorial Guinea. Vuestra merced evolved into usted. Note that the term vosotros is a combined form of vos otros, while the term nosotros comes from nos otros.
In the first half of the 19th century the use of vos was as prevalent in Chile as it was in Argentina. The current limitation of the use of vos in Chile is attributed to a campaign to eradicate it by the Chilean education system. The campaign was initiated by Andrés Bello who considered the use of vos a manifestation of lack of education.

Usage

''Vos'' in relation to other forms of ''tú''

The independent disjunctive pronoun vos also replaces ti, from the "tuteo" set of forms. That is, vos is both nominative and the form to use after prepositions. Therefore, para vos "for you" corresponds to the "tuteo" para ti, etc.
The preposition-pronoun combination con vos "with you" is used for the "tuteo" contigo.
The direct and indirect object form te is used in both "voseo" and "tuteo".
The possessive pronouns of vos also coincide with tú <tu, tuyo, tuya> rather than with vosotros <vuestro, vuestra>.

Conjugation with ''vos''

All modern voseo conjugations derive from Old Spanish second person plural -ades, -edes, -ides, and -odes. The 14th and 15th centuries saw an evolution of these conjugations, with -ades originally giving -áis, -edes giving -és, -ides giving -ís, and -odes giving -óis. Soon analogous forms -ás and -éis appeared. Hence the variety of forms the contemporary American voseo adopts, some varieties featuring a generalized monophthong, some a generalized diphthong, and some combining monophthongs and diphthongs, depending on the conjugation. In the most general, monophthongized, conjugation paradigm, a difference between voseo forms and respective tuteo forms is visible exclusively in the present indicative, imperative and subjunctive, and, most of the time, in the preterite. 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 orally only in Spain; in oratory or legal language it is used outside of Spain. Verb forms that agree with vos are stressed on the last syllable, causing the loss of the stem diphthong in those verbs, such as poder and venir, which are stem-changing.
General conjugation is the one that is most widely accepted and used in various countries such as Argentina, Uruguay, Paraguay, parts of Bolivia, Ecuador, and Colombia, as well as Central American countries.
Some Uruguayan speakers combine the pronoun tú with the vos conjugation. Conversely, speakers in some other places where both tú and vos are used combine vos with the tú conjugation. This is a frequent occurrence in the Argentine province of Santiago del Estero.
The verb forms employed with vos are also different in Chilean Spanish: Chileans with voseo delete the final -s from the final diphthong -áis :.
In the case of the ending -ís, the final -s is not totally dropped. Rather, in most cases, especially before a consonant, an aspiration similar to the 'h' sound in English is still audible.
Both Chilean Spanish and Venezuelan Maracucho Spanish are notable in that they preserve the diphthongized plural verb forms in all tenses, as still used with vosotros in Spain.
In Ladino, the -áis, -éis, -ís, & -ois endings are pronounced,,, &.
In Chile, it is much more usual to use tú + vos verb conjugation. The use of pronominal vos is reserved for very informal situations and may even be considered vulgar in some cases.

Present indicative

  1. General conjugation: the final -r of the infinitive is replaced by -s; in writing, an acute accent is added to the last vowel to indicate stress position.
  2. Chilean:
  3. # the -ar ending of the infinitive is replaced by -ái
  4. # both -er and -ir are replaced by -ís, which sounds more like -íh.
  5. Venezuelan : practically the same ending as modern Spanish vosotros, yet with the final -s being aspirated so that: -áis, -éis, -ís sound like -áih, -éih, -íh.
Unlike tú, which has many irregular forms, the only voseo verbs that are conjugated irregularly in the indicative present are ser, ir and haber. However, haber is seldom used in the indicative present, since there is a strong tendency to use preterite instead of present perfect.

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 usually used, with andá being generally used instead; except for the Argentine province of Tucumán, where the imperative ite is used. For most regular verbs ending in -ir, the vos imperatives use the same conjugations as the yo form in the preterite; almost all verbs that are irregular in the preterite retain the regular vos imperative forms.
VerbMeaningTúVosVosotros
ser"to be"sésésed
estar"to be"está / estateestá / estateestad
ir"to go"veid / ite *id
hablar"to speak"hablahabláhablad
callar"to become silent"callacallácallad
soltar"to release/let go"sueltasoltásoltad
comer"to eat"comecomécomed
mover"to move"muevemovémoved
venir"to come"venvení ‡venid
poner"to put"ponponéponed
salir"to leave"salsalísalid
tener"to have"tentenétened
decir"to say"didecí ‡decid
pedir"to ask/order"pidepedípedid

Again, the conjugation of tú has far more irregularities, whereas vos has only one irregular verb in the affirmative imperative.
In Chile, the general vos conjugation is not used in the affirmative imperative.

Subjunctive

In most places where voseo is used, it is applied also in the subjunctive. In the Río de la Plata region, both the tú-conjugation and the voseo conjugation are found, the tú-form being more common. In this variety, some studies have shown a pragmatic difference between the tú-form and the vos-form, such that the vos form carries information about the speaker's belief state, and can be stigmatized. For example, in Central America the subjunctive and negative command form is no mintás, and in Chile it is no mintái; however, in Río de la Plata both no mientas and no mintás are found. Real Academia Española models its voseo conjugation tables on the most frequent, unstigmatized Río de la Plata usage and therefore omits the subjunctive voseo.

Verbal ''voseo'' and pronominal ''voseo''

Countries where ''voseo'' is predominant

In South America:
  1. Argentina — both pronominal and verbal voseo, the pronoun tú is virtually unused
  2. Paraguay — both pronominal and verbal voseo, the pronoun tú is virtually unused in most of the country, except in Concepción
  3. Uruguay — both pronoun + verb and pronoun tú + verb conjugated in the vos form
In Central America:
  1. Nicaragua — both pronominal and verbal voseo; the pronoun tú is seldom used.
  2. Guatemala — verbal voseo is widespread in the country; it is commonly used throughout the society. The pronoun tú, although not unheard, is extremely rare.
  3. Costa Rica — voseo has historically been used, back in the 2000s it was losing ground to ustedeo and tuteo, especially among younger speakers. Vos is now primarily used orally with friends and family in Cartago, Guanacaste province, the San Jose metropolitan area and near the Nicaraguan border and in advertising signage. Usted is the primary form in other areas and with strangers. Tuteo is rarely used, but when it is used in speech by a Costa Rican, it is commonly considered fake and effeminate.

    Countries where it is extensive, but not predominant

In South America:
In Central America:
In the following countries, voseo is used in certain areas:
In the following countries, the use of vos has disappeared completely and is not used at all.
The traditional assumption that Chilean and River Plate voseo verb forms are derived from those corresponding to vosotros has been challenged as synchronically inadequate in a 2014 article, on the grounds that it requires at least six different rules, including three monophthongization processes that completely lack phonological motivation. Alternatively, the article argues that the Chilean and River Plate voseo verb forms are synchronically derived from underlying representations that coincide with those corresponding to the non-honorific second person singular tú. The proposed theory requires the use of only one special rule in the case of Chilean voseo. This rule plus other rules that are independently justified in the language make it possible to synchronically derive all the Chilean and River Plate voseo verb forms in a straightforward manner. The article additionally solves the problem posed by the alternate verbal forms of Chilean voseo like the future indicative, the present indicative forms of haber, and the present indicative of ser, without resorting to any ad hoc rules. The theoretical framework of the article is that of classic generative phonology.

Attitudes

In some countries, the pronoun vos is used with family and friends, like tú in other varieties of Spanish, and contrasts with the respectful usted which is used with strangers, elderly and people of higher socioeconomic status; appropriate usage varies by dialect. In Central America, vos can be used among those considered equals, while usted maintains its respectful usage. In Ladino, the pronoun usted is completely absent, so the use of vos with strangers and elders is the standard.
Voseo was long considered a reprehensible practice by prescriptivist grammarians, but it is now regarded simply as a local variant.