Voseo: forms and recognition

What it is

Voseo means using vos instead of tú for the informal singular "you". It isn't slang or a mistake: it's the normal everyday form in Argentina, Uruguay and Paraguay, where you'll also find it in ads and on TV, and it's very common in Central America (Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Costa Rica). It also lives side by side with tú in parts of Colombia, Venezuela, Bolivia and Ecuador, and Chile has a version of its own.

Vos is singular and informal, exactly like tú. The plural is still ustedes, and usted is still the formal option.

On glot.space, tú stays the default. Everyone learns to recognise voseo; you only produce it if you switch on the optional voseo track (Río de la Plata or Central America).

How to form it

Present tense (presente). Take the infinitive, drop the -r, add -s and stress the ending: hablar → hablás, comer → comés, vivir → vivís. Because the stress falls on the ending, the stem never changes: querés, podés, tenés, dormís, pedís, decís. A few short verbs look just like the tú form (vas, estás, das, ves, has), and the one real surprise is ser: vos sos.

Imperative (imperativo). Drop the -r and stress the last vowel. Even the irregular tú commands become regular, and ir borrows andá from andar:

With an attached pronoun the written accent disappears, because the stress stays on the same syllable: sentate, decime, contame, avisame.

Present subjunctive (presente de subjuntivo). The standard forms are the same as for tú: Quiero que vengas. No te preocupes. In speech you'll also hear forms stressed on the ending, such as que vengás or no te preocupés: recognise them, but write the standard ones.

Other tenses are the same as with tú: hablaste, hablabas, vas a hablar.

Pronouns. Vos is the subject and the form after a preposition, but the object and reflexive pronoun stays te and the possessive stays tu:

When to use it

Recognise it everywhere. In Buenos Aires or Montevideo you'll hear vos on the street, on the radio and among friends; in Central America it's above all the form used with friends and family:

• —¿Vos sos de Rosario? —No, soy de Montevideo, ¿y vos?—Are you from Rosario? —No, I'm from Montevideo. And you?sos = eres
• Vení a casa el sábado y traé tu guitarra.Come over on Saturday and bring your guitar.vení, traé = ven, trae
• Si querés, te paso a buscar a las ocho.If you like, I'll pick you up at eight.querés = quieres
• Quiero que vengas a la fiesta, pero si no podés, avisame.I want you to come to the party, but if you can't, let me know.standard subjunctive: vengas

How to spot it. Listen for a stressed ending: -ás, -és or -ís in statements and questions (¿Tenés hora?, ¿Sabés dónde queda?), and a stressed final vowel in commands (esperá, vení). Two commands work almost like fillers: mirá ("look…", used like "listen") and fijate ("look, check"): Mirá, no sé. Fijate si está abierto.

Produce it if you choose. If you live in or often travel to a voseo region, using vos with friends will sound natural there, and tú may sound a little distant or foreign. Elsewhere, tú is the safe choice. Both are informal: with strangers and older people, many voseo speakers prefer usted, and in Costa Rica plenty of people use usted even with friends and family.

Chile: recognition only. Chileans mostly keep the pronoun tú but use their own verb endings: ¿Cómo estái? (estás), ¿Qué querís? (quieres), ¿Vai a venir? (vas). It's everywhere in casual speech, but it's very informal: understand it, don't copy it.

Contrasts and traps

• Keep one system. Don't switch between vos querés and tú puedes in the same conversation.
• No stem change: querés, podés, dormís; never quierés or puedés.
• Write the accent: querés, hablá, vení. Without it, queres isn't a word.
• Vos is never an object: Te quiero, not vos quiero. For emphasis, add a vos: A vos te quiero.
• The possessive is tu: tu casa, never vos casa.
• Vos is singular. For more than one person, use ustedes: ¿Ustedes vienen?

If you also speak Portuguese

Despite the shared Latin origin, Spanish vos works nothing like Portuguese vós: it's singular, informal and very much alive, and its forms (sos, tenés) aren't sois or tendes. Southern Brazilian tu vai, with a third-person verb, doesn't transfer either: Spanish says vos vas or tú vas, never vos va. The pronoun mix will feel familiar, though: Brazilian você pairs with te in the same way (você sabe que eu te amo).