Regional grammatical variation

What it is

Spanish has no single centre. Mexico City, Bogotá, Buenos Aires, Lima, Havana and Madrid each have an educated standard of their own, and those standards share almost all of their grammar. The differences that remain are few but very audible: how you say "you", which past tense goes with hoy, where the subject sits in a Caribbean question, what hasta means in Mexico. At C2 you sort every regional feature into one of three boxes:

1. Regional standard: correct in its region at every level of formality (vos sos, vosotros, ustedes for friends, recién llegué, le vi for a man in Spain).
2. Regional colloquial: normal in speech, avoided in formal writing (¿Qué tú quieres?, ahorita, se los dije).
3. Non-standard: common in speech, sometimes across the whole Spanish-speaking world, but corrected in careful writing everywhere (habían muchas personas, hacen dos años, Madrid's la dije).

The goal: understand every variety, produce one consistently, and know which box a form belongs to.

How to form it

Forms of address.

Voseo verb forms. Vos has its own present and imperative; most other tenses match tú:

Other features at a glance.

When to use it

For production, choose one variety (that of the people you talk to most, or a neutral Latin American Spanish with tú and ustedes) and stay inside it: pronoun, verb forms and clitics must match. For comprehension, expect everything:

• ¿Vos querés que te pase a buscar a las ocho?Do you want me to pick you up at eight?Río de la Plata: querés, no diphthong
• Recién el lunes vamos a saber los resultados.We won't know the results until Monday.Southern Cone: recién + time = not until
• Hoy he desayunado con mi padre.I had breakfast with my father today.Spain: perfect for today
• Ahorita vengo, voy por las tortillas.I'll be right back, I'm going to get the tortillas.Mexico

Treat regional forms as information, not as mistakes: an ahorita, a vos or a vosotros tells you where the speaker is from.

Try it

Five quick exercises from this topic's training set:

Contrasts and traps

• hasta. In Mexico and Central America, Abren hasta las diez means they open at ten; elsewhere it would mean they close at ten. With a mixed audience, say No abren hasta las diez or Abren a las diez.
• ahorita. In Mexico it stretches from "this very second" to "in a while, maybe". Context, or ahorita mismo, narrows it down.
• recién. In Spain it only goes before a participle (recién pintado). In Latin America it also takes a finite verb (recién llegué, I've just arrived) and time expressions (recién el lunes, not until Monday).
• Perfect or preterite. Most of Spain uses the perfect (pretérito perfecto compuesto) for today: Hoy he comido con mi madre. Latin America uses the preterite (pretérito indefinido): Hoy comí con mi mamá, and keeps the perfect for experiences and situations still going on (Nunca he estado en Cusco).
• Leísmo, laísmo, loísmo. Le vi for a man (Spain) is accepted leísmo; for a woman or a thing it is not. La dije que viniera (laísmo) and Lo di un regalo (loísmo) are non-standard.
• se los. Se los dije (I told them that) moves the plural of les onto lo. It is very common in Latin American speech; in formal writing, se lo dije.
• Impersonal verbs stay singular. Existential haber (haber existencial) and hacer for time have no subject: había muchas personas, hubo problemas, ha habido quejas, hace dos años; never habían, hubieron, han habido, hacen.
• Don't mix systems. Vos tenés razón, pero tienes que… switches variety mid-sentence. Pick one set of pronouns and verbs and stay with it.

For Portuguese speakers

Portuguese helps here more than anywhere else:

• Mais nada, mais ninguém, mais nunca are exactly Caribbean más nada, más nadie, más nunca; elsewhere: nada más, nadie más, nunca más.
• Para eu ir is Caribbean para yo ir; general Spanish says para que yo vaya.
• Vocês is ustedes, everywhere in the Americas, for friends and strangers alike.

The traps:

• Tinha muita gente → Había mucha gente: existential haber, singular, never tenía or habían.
• Faz dois anos → Hace dos años, singular, as in careful Portuguese.
• Recém only goes with participles (recém-chegado), like Spain's recién; Latin American recién llegué means acabei de chegar.
• Brazilian você… te does not carry over to usted: Señora, ¿quiere que la ayude?, not que te ayude.
• Spain's vosotros has no living Portuguese counterpart (vós survives only in prayers), so learn its forms for recognition.