Voseo - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

Voseo is the use of the second person

Grammatical person

Grammatical person, in linguistics, is deictic reference to a participant in an event; such as the speaker, the addressee, or others. Grammatical person typically defines a language's set of personal pronouns...

singular

Grammatical number

In linguistics, grammatical number is a grammatical category of nouns, pronouns, and adjective and verb agreement that expresses count distinctions ....

pronoun

Pronoun

In linguistics and grammar, a pronoun is a pro-form that substitutes for a noun , such as, in English, the words it and he...

vos in many dialects of Spanish

Spanish language

Spanish , also known as Castilian , is a Romance language in the Ibero-Romance group that evolved from several languages and dialects in central-northern Iberia around the 9th century and gradually spread with the expansion of the Kingdom of Castile into central and southern Iberia during the...

. In dialects that have it, it is used either instead of tú, or alongside it.

Vos is used extensively as the primary form of the second person singular in Rioplatense Spanish

Rioplatense Spanish

Rioplatense Spanish or River Plate Spanish is a dialectal variant of the Spanish language spoken mainly in the areas in and around the Río de la Plata basin of Argentina and Uruguay, and also in Rio Grande do Sul, although features of the dialect are shared with the varieties of Spanish spoken...

for Argentina

Argentina

Argentina , officially the Argentine Republic , is the second largest country in South America by land area, after Brazil. It is constituted as a federation of 23 provinces and an autonomous city, Buenos Aires...

, Uruguay

Uruguay

Uruguay ,officially the Oriental Republic of Uruguay,sometimes the Eastern Republic of Uruguay; ) is a country in the southeastern part of South America. It is home to some 3.5 million people, of whom 1.8 million live in the capital Montevideo and its metropolitan area...

, Paraguay

Paraguay

Paraguay , officially the Republic of Paraguay , is a landlocked country in South America. It is bordered by Argentina to the south and southwest, Brazil to the east and northeast, and Bolivia to the northwest. Paraguay lies on both banks of the Paraguay River, which runs through the center of the...

. El Salvador

El Salvador

El Salvador or simply Salvador is the smallest and the most densely populated country in Central America. The country's capital city and largest city is San Salvador; Santa Ana and San Miguel are also important cultural and commercial centers in the country and in all of Central America...

and Nicaragua

Nicaragua

Nicaragua is the largest country in the Central American American isthmus, bordered by Honduras to the north and Costa Rica to the south. The country is situated between 11 and 14 degrees north of the Equator in the Northern Hemisphere, which places it entirely within the tropics. The Pacific Ocean...

also exhibit an extensive use of the vos pronoun through the Central American Spanish

Central American Spanish

Central American Spanish is the general name of the Spanish language dialects spoken in Central America...

dialect. A similar but less intensive following of the pronoun is exhibited in Guatemala

Guatemala

Guatemala is a country in Central America bordered by Mexico to the north and west, the Pacific Ocean to the southwest, Belize to the northeast, the Caribbean to the east, and Honduras and El Salvador to the southeast...

, Honduras

Honduras

Honduras is a republic in Central America. It was previously known as Spanish Honduras to differentiate it from British Honduras, which became the modern-day state of Belize...

and Costa Rica

Costa Rica

Costa Rica , officially the Republic of Costa Rica is a multilingual, multiethnic and multicultural country in Central America, bordered by Nicaragua to the north, Panama to the southeast, the Pacific Ocean to the west and the Caribbean Sea to the east....

. The pronoun is also widely used in Bolivia

Bolivia

Bolivia officially known as Plurinational State of Bolivia , is a landlocked country in central South America. It is the poorest country in South America...

, though the media use tú more.

Vos had traditionally not been used in formal writing, except in Argentina, Paraguay and Uruguay. This gradually changed in Central America, where even the most prestigious media networks and press began to use the pronoun vos, reflecting the informal address in Spanish as opposed to the formal address of usted. This is particularly true in El Salvador, Nicaragua and to a similar but lesser extent in Costa Rica

Costa Rica

, Honduras, Guatemala; all of which speak in the Central American Spanish

Central American Spanish

Central American Spanish is the general name of the Spanish language dialects spoken in Central America...

dialect. Nowadays it is very common to see billboards and other advertising media using voseo. In the dialect of Argentina, Paraguay and Uruguay (known as Rioplatense Spanish

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

Venezuela

Venezuela , officially called the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela , is a tropical country on the northern coast of South America. It borders Colombia to the west, Guyana to the east, and Brazil to the south...

(see Venezuelan Spanish

Venezuelan Spanish

Venezuelan Spanish is a dialect of the Spanish language spoken in Venezuela.Spanish was introduced in Venezuela by the conquistadors. Most of them were from Andalusia, Galicia, Basque Country, and the Canary Islands...

), in the Azuero peninsula of Panama

Panama

Panama , officially the Republic of Panama , is the southernmost country of Central America. Situated on the isthmus connecting North and South America, it is bordered by Costa Rica to the northwest, Colombia to the southeast, the Caribbean Sea to the north and the Pacific Ocean to the south. The...

, in various departments in Colombia

Colombia

Colombia, officially the Republic of Colombia , is a unitary constitutional republic comprising thirty-two departments. The country is located in northwestern South America, bordered to the east by Venezuela and Brazil; to the south by Ecuador and Peru; to the north by the Caribbean Sea; to the...

, and in parts of Ecuador

Ecuador

Ecuador , officially the Republic of Ecuador is a representative democratic republic in South America, bordered by Colombia on the north, Peru on the east and south, and by the Pacific Ocean to the west. It is one of only two countries in South America, along with Chile, that do not have a border...

(Sierra down to Esmeraldas

Esmeraldas

Esmeraldas is the Spanish word for 'emeralds'. It is a toponym that may refer to the following:*Brazil**Esmeraldas, Minas Gerais*Ecuador**Esmeraldas, Ecuador**Esmeraldas River**Esmeraldas Province**Esmeraldas Canton*Special:Allpages/Esmeraldas...

). In Peru

Peru

Peru , officially the Republic of Peru , is a country in western South America. It is bordered on the north by Ecuador and Colombia, on the east by Brazil, on the southeast by Bolivia, on the south by Chile, and on the west by the Pacific Ocean....

, voseo is present in some Andean regions and Cajamarca

Cajamarca

Cajamarca may refer to:Colombia*Cajamarca, Tolima a town and municipality in Tolima DepartmentPeru* Cajamarca, city in Peru.* Cajamarca District, district in the Cajamarca province.* Cajamarca Province, province in the Cajamarca region....

, but the younger generations have ceased to use it. It is also present in the Ladino dialect of Spanish, spoken by Sephardic Jews throughout Israel

Israel

The State of Israel is a parliamentary republic located in the Middle East, along the eastern shore of the Mediterranean Sea...

, Turkey

Turkey

Turkey , known officially as the Republic of Turkey , is a Eurasian country located in Western Asia and in East Thrace in Southeastern Europe...

, the Balkans, Morocco

Morocco

Morocco , officially the Kingdom of Morocco , is a country located in North Africa. It has a population of more than 32 million and an area of 710,850 km², and also primarily administers the disputed region of the Western Sahara...

, Latin America

Latin America

Latin America is a region of the Americas where Romance languages – particularly Spanish and Portuguese, and variably French – are primarily spoken. Latin America has an area of approximately 21,069,500 km² , almost 3.9% of the Earth's surface or 14.1% of its land surface area...

and the United States

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

.

Voseo can also be used in the context of using verb conjugation of vos with tú as the subject pronoun, as in the case of Chilean Spanish

Chilean Spanish

Chilean Spanish is the variety of Spanish spoken in most of Chile. Though still entirely mutually intelligible with standard Spanish, Chilean Spanish has distinctive pronunciation, grammar, vocabulary, and slang usage...

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:

We seldom make use in Spanish of the second Person Singular or Plural, except through a great familiarity among friends, or speaking to God; also between a wife and husband to themselves, or when parents address their children, or to servants. Examples: O Dios, sois vos mi Padre verdadero, O God, thou art my true Father; Tu eres un buen amigo, Thou art a good friend.

The correct formal way to address a person you were not on familiar terms with was to address such a person as vuestra merced ("your grace" originally abbreviated as v.m.) in the singular and vuestras mercedes in the plural. These forms logically used a third person verb form. Other formal forms of address included vuestra excelencia (abbreviated as ussencia) and vuestra señoria (abbreviated as ussia). 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 Castilian was brought to the Río de la Plata

Río de la Plata

The Río de la Plata —sometimes rendered River Plate in British English and the Commonwealth, and occasionally rendered [La] Plata River in other English-speaking countries—is the river and estuary formed by the confluence of the Uruguay River and the Paraná River on the border between Argentina and...

area (around Buenos Aires

Buenos Aires

Buenos Aires is the capital and largest city of Argentina, and the second-largest metropolitan area in South America, after São Paulo. It is located on the western shore of the estuary of the Río de la Plata, on the southeastern coast of the South American continent...

and Montevideo

Montevideo

Montevideo is the largest city, the capital, and the chief port of Uruguay. The settlement was established in 1726 by Bruno Mauricio de Zabala, as a strategic move amidst a Spanish-Portuguese dispute over the platine region, and as a counter to the Portuguese colony at Colonia del Sacramento...

) and to Chile.

In time, vos lost currency in Spain but survived in Argentina, Paraguay, Uruguay, Guatemala, Nicaragua, and many other countries and regions in Latin America, while Vuestra merced evolved into usted (vuestra merced > usarced > usted, in fact, "usted" is still abbreviated as either Vd or Ud). Note that the term vosotros is a combined form of vos otros (meaning literally "you others"), while the term nosotros comes from nos otros ("us others"); otros was added to avoid confusion.

Vos as a replacement for other forms of tú

The independent disjunctive pronoun ti is also replaced by vos. That is, vos is both nominative

Nominative case

The nominative case is one of the grammatical cases of a noun or other part of speech, which generally marks the subject of a verb or the predicate noun or predicate adjective, as opposed to its object or other verb arguments...

and 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 direct and indirect object form te remains the same, unlike in the case of vosotros, where it becomes os.

Nominative	Objective Objective (grammar) An objective pronoun in grammar functions as the target of a verb, as distinguished from a subjective pronoun, which is the initiator of a verb. Objective pronouns are instances of the oblique case....			Reflexive Reflexive Reflexive may refer to:In fiction:MetafictionIn grammar:Reflexive pronoun, a pronoun with a reflexive relationship with its self-identical antecedent*Reflexive verb, where a semantic agent and patient are the same...
subject Subject -Philosophy:Hypokeimenon or subiectum, in metaphysics, the essential being of a thing*Subject , a being that has subjective experiences, subjective consciousness, or a relationship with another entity...	direct object	indirect object	prepositional object Object (grammar) An object in grammar is part of a sentence, and often part of the predicate. It denotes somebody or something involved in the subject's "performance" of the verb. Basically, it is what or whom the verb is acting upon...	con + form	plain
vos	te	te	vos	con vos	te
usted	lo / la	le	usted	con usted	usted
tú	te	te	ti	contigo	te
vosotros	os	os	vosotros	con vosotros	os

The possessive pronouns of vos also coincide with tú rather than with vosotros .

Conjugation with vos

All modern voseo declensions derive from Old Spanish second person plural -ades, -edes, -ides, and -odes (as in sodes, 'you are'). The 14th and 15th centuries saw an evolution of these declensions, with -ades originally giving -ais, -edes giving -es or -is, -ides giving -is, and -odes giving -ois. Soon analogous forms -as and -eis appeared. Hence the variety of forms the contemporary American voseo adopts, some varieties featuring a generalized monophthong (most of them), some a generalized diphthong (e.g. Venezuela), and some combining monophthongs and diphthongs, depending on the declension (e.g. Chile). 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 only in Spain. The accented forms (vos and vosotros) and the infinitive

Infinitive

In grammar, infinitive is the name for certain verb forms that exist in many languages. In the usual description of English, the infinitive of a verb is its basic form with or without the particle to: therefore, do and to do, be and to be, and so on are infinitives...

s are stress

Stress (linguistics)

In linguistics, stress is the relative emphasis that may be given to certain syllables in a word, or to certain words in a phrase or sentence. The term is also used for similar patterns of phonetic prominence inside syllables. The word accent is sometimes also used with this sense.The stress placed...

ed on the last syllable; the tú forms are stressed on the penultimate one. Note the absence of diphtongization in the root

Root (linguistics)

The root word is the primary lexical unit of a word, and of a word family , which carries the most significant aspects of semantic content and cannot be reduced into smaller constituents....

s of poder and venir.

Verb	Meaning	Tú	Usted	Vos (General)	Vos (Venezuela/Panama(Azuero)	Vos/Tú (Chile)	Vos (Ladino)	Vosotros	Ustedes
hablar	"to speak"	hablas	habla	hablás	habláis	hablái	favlásh	habláis	hablan
comer	"to eat"	comes	come	comés	coméis	comís	komésh	coméis	comen
poder	"to be able"	puedes	puede	podés	podéis	podís	podésh	podéis	pueden
vivir	"to live"	vives	vive	vivís	vivís	vivís	bivísh	vivís	viven
ser	"to be"	eres	es	sos	sois	soi/erís	sosh	sois	son
haber	"to have"	has	ha	has	habéis	habís/hai		habéis	han
venir	"to come"	vienes	viene	venís	venís	venís	benísh	venís	vienen

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 (for example, tú sabés). Conversely, speakers in some other places where both tú and vos are used combine vos with the tú conjugation (for example, vos sabes).

The verb forms employed with vos are also different in Chilean Spanish:
Chileans with voseo delete the final -s from the final diphthong -áis (and -ois): (vos/tú soi/erís; vos/tú estái).
In the case of the ending -ís (such as in comís, podís, vivís, erís, venís), 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. The same happens in the Azuero peninsula of Panama.

In Ladino

Judaeo-Spanish

Judaeo-Spanish , in Israel commonly referred to as Ladino, and known locally as Judezmo, Djudeo-Espanyol, Djudezmo, Djudeo-Kasteyano, Spaniolit and other names, is a Romance language derived from Old Spanish...

, the -áis, -éis, -ís, & -ois endings are pronounced /aʃ/, /eʃ/, /iʃ/, & /oʃ/.

In Chile, it is much more usual to use tú + vos verb conjugation (tú sabís). The use of pronominal vos (vos sabís) 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 an -S, and an acute accent

Acute accent

The acute accent is a diacritic used in many modern written languages with alphabets based on the Latin, Cyrillic, and Greek scripts.-Apex:An early precursor of the acute accent was the apex, used in Latin inscriptions to mark long vowels.-Greek:...

is added to the final vowel, the one preceding the final -S, to keep the stress.

2. As for the Chilean voseo, the -AR ending of the infinitive is replaced by -ÁI, whereas both -ER and -IR are replaced by -ÍS, which sounds more like -ÍH.

Infinitive	General voseo	Chilean voseo
oír	oís	oís
venir	venís	venís
decir	decís	decís
dormir	dormís	dormís
sentir	sentís	sentís
salir	salís	salís
concluir	concluís	concluís
poder	podés	podís
querer	querés	querís
mover	movés	movís
pensar	pensás	pensái
contar	contás	contái
jugar	jugás	jugái
errar	errás	errái

Unlike tú, which has many irregular forms, the only verb that is conjugated irregularly in the voseo forms in the indicative present is ser (vos sos).
The Chilean forms are tú/vos soi/erís, tú/vos vai, and tú/vos hai....

Affirmative imperative

Vos also differs in its affirmative imperative

Imperative mood

The imperative mood expresses commands or requests as a grammatical mood. These commands or requests urge the audience to act a certain way. It also may signal a prohibition, permission, or any other kind of exhortation.- Morphology :...

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 used, with andá (the vos imperative of andar) being generally used instead.

Verb	Meaning	Tú	Vos	Vosotros
ser	"to be"	sé	sé	sed
ir	"to go"	ve	andá	id
hablar	"to speak"	habla	hablá	hablad
callar	"to become silent"	calla	callá	callad
soltar	"to release/let go"	suelta	soltá	soltad
comer	"to eat"	come	comé	comed
mover	"to move"	mueve	mové	moved
venir	"to come"	ven	vení	venid
poner	"to put"	pon	poné	poned
salir	"to leave"	sal	salí	salid
tener	"to have"	ten	tené	tened
decir	"to say"	di	decí	decid
pedir	"to ask/order"	pide	pedí	pedid

Again, the conjugation 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

Everywhere voseo is used, it is applied in the subjunctive, with the exception of Río de la Plata

Río de la Plata

region, where the tú-conjugation is more common. For example, in Central America it is no mintás and in Chile is no mintái; however in Río de la Plata it is no mientas, just like in Spain or México. Real Academia Española

Real Academia Española

The Royal Spanish Academy is the official royal institution responsible for regulating the Spanish language. It is based in Madrid, Spain, but is affiliated with national language academies in twenty-one other hispanophone nations through the Association of Spanish Language Academies...

models its voseo conjugation tables with Río de la Plata usage and therefore omits the subjunctive voseo. In this region, the vos-form in the subjunctive has not completely disappeared. It is still used to show emphasis or emotion.

Central America Bolivia	Río de la Plata Río de la Plata The Río de la Plata —sometimes rendered River Plate in British English and the Commonwealth, and occasionally rendered [La] Plata River in other English-speaking countries—is the river and estuary formed by the confluence of the Uruguay River and the Paraná River on the border between Argentina and... region	Chile	Venezuela (Zulia State) & Panama (Azuero)	Meaning
No quiero que mintás.	No quiero que mientas.	No quiero que mintái.	No quiero que mintáis.	I do not want you to lie.
No temás.	No temas.	No temái	No temáis.	Do not fear.
Que durmás bien	Que duermas bien.	Que durmái bien	Que durmáis bien.	Sleep well.
No te preocupés.	No te preocupes.	No te preocupís.	No te preocupéis.	Do not worry.

Countries where voseo is predominant

In South America

Argentina
Argentina
Argentina , officially the Argentine Republic , is the second largest country in South America by land area, after Brazil. It is constituted as a federation of 23 provinces and an autonomous city, Buenos Aires...

* (pronominal and verbal voseo, the pronoun tú is practically not used)
Paraguay
Paraguay
Paraguay , officially the Republic of Paraguay , is a landlocked country in South America. It is bordered by Argentina to the south and southwest, Brazil to the east and northeast, and Bolivia to the northwest. Paraguay lies on both banks of the Paraguay River, which runs through the center of the...

* (pronominal and verbal voseo, the pronoun tú is practically not used)
Uruguay
Uruguay
Uruguay ,officially the Oriental Republic of Uruguay,sometimes the Eastern Republic of Uruguay; ) is a country in the southeastern part of South America. It is home to some 3.5 million people, of whom 1.8 million live in the capital Montevideo and its metropolitan area...

* (both pronoun+verb and pronoun "tú" + verb conjugated in the "vos" form.)

In Central America

El Salvador
El Salvador
El Salvador or simply Salvador is the smallest and the most densely populated country in Central America. The country's capital city and largest city is San Salvador; Santa Ana and San Miguel are also important cultural and commercial centers in the country and in all of Central America...

*
Guatemala
Guatemala
Guatemala is a country in Central America bordered by Mexico to the north and west, the Pacific Ocean to the southwest, Belize to the northeast, the Caribbean to the east, and Honduras and El Salvador to the southeast...
Honduras
Honduras
Honduras is a republic in Central America. It was previously known as Spanish Honduras to differentiate it from British Honduras, which became the modern-day state of Belize...
Nicaragua
Nicaragua
Nicaragua is the largest country in the Central American American isthmus, bordered by Honduras to the north and Costa Rica to the south. The country is situated between 11 and 14 degrees north of the Equator in the Northern Hemisphere, which places it entirely within the tropics. The Pacific Ocean...

*
Costa Rica
Costa Rica
Costa Rica , officially the Republic of Costa Rica is a multilingual, multiethnic and multicultural country in Central America, bordered by Nicaragua to the north, Panama to the southeast, the Pacific Ocean to the west and the Caribbean Sea to the east....

* In Argentina, El Salvador, Paraguay, Uruguay and Nicaragua, voseo is used in most of the written language. In the rest of the countries, tú is common in formal language (media, correspondence, when addressing foreigners, etc.)

Countries where both forms are used

In the following countries, voseo is used in certain areas:

Bolivia in Santa Cruz
Santa Cruz de la Sierra
Santa Cruz de la Sierra, commonly known as Santa Cruz, is the capital of the Santa Cruz department in eastern Bolivia and the largest city in the country...

, Beni
Beni
Beni may refer to:Places*Beni Department, Beni River and the Beni savanna, Bolivia*Beni Suef and Beni Hasan, Egypt*Beni Mellal and Beni Amir, Morocco*Beni, Nord-Kivu, Democratic Republic of the Congo*Beni, Nepal Culture...

, Pando
Pando
-People:*Pando of Capua , "Pando the Rapacious", Count of Capua*Gabriela Pando , Argentine field hockey player*José Manuel Pando , 29th President of Bolivia*Juan Pando , Spanish historian...

and Tarija
Tarija, Bolivia
Tarija or San Bernardo de la Frontera de Tarixa is a city in southern Bolivia. Founded in 1574, Tarija is both the capital and largest city within the Tarija Department, with an airport offering regular service to primary Bolivian cities, as well as a regional bus terminal with domestic and...

the voseo is used universally, while in the West of the country tú is predominant but there still a strong use of the voseo.
Chile verbal voseo is spreading north- and southwards from the center, whereas the pronominal voseo is reserved only for very intimate situations or to offend someone. In addition, voseo in Chile is only used in informal situations; in every other situation, the normal tú conjugation is used (or usted).
Colombia, in the departments
- in the west (Pacific Coast)
  - Chocó
  - Valle del Cauca
  - Cauca
  - Nariño
- in the center, primarily Paisa Region
  Paisa Region
  The Paisas are a people who inhabit a region over the northwest Colombia in the Andes.The region is formed by the departments of Antioquia, Caldas, Risaralda and Quindío. Some regions of Valle del Cauca Department and Tolima Department belong to the cultural identity of paisas...
  
  (Departments of Antioquia, Risaralda, Quindío, and Caldas).
- in the (North) East
  - Norte de Santander - Ocaña Region
    Ocaña
    Ocaña may refer to:*Ocaña, Colombia, a city in Norte de Santander department*Ocaña, Spain, a town in the province of Toledo, site of:**Battle of Ocana, during the Peninsular War*Luis Ocana, a Spanish cyclistSee also:...
  - La Guajira
    Department of La Guajira
    La Guajira is a department of Colombia. It occupies most of its namesake peninsula, the Guajira Peninsula in the northeast region of the country, facing the Caribbean Sea and Venezuela in the northern most part of South America...
  - Cesar
Ecuador in the Sierra, the center, and Esmeraldas
Panama
Panama
Panama , officially the Republic of Panama , is the southernmost country of Central America. Situated on the isthmus connecting North and South America, it is bordered by Costa Rica to the northwest, Colombia to the southeast, the Caribbean Sea to the north and the Pacific Ocean to the south. The...

in the west along the border to Costa Rica and in the Azuero Peninsula.
Venezuela in the northwest (primarily in Zulia State)

Countries where vos is practically out of use

In the following countries, the use of vos has disappeared completely or survives only very marginally in daily speech

Spain
Spain
Spain , officially the Kingdom of Spain languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Spain's official name is as follows:;;;;;;), is a country and member state of the European Union located in southwestern Europe on the Iberian Peninsula...

*
Dominican Republic
Dominican Republic
The Dominican Republic is a nation on the island of La Hispaniola, part of the Greater Antilles archipelago in the Caribbean region. The western third of the island is occupied by the nation of Haiti, making Hispaniola one of two Caribbean islands that are shared by two countries...
Puerto Rico
Puerto Rico
Puerto Rico , officially the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico , is an unincorporated territory of the United States, located in the northeastern Caribbean, east of the Dominican Republic and west of both the United States Virgin Islands and the British Virgin Islands.Puerto Rico comprises an...
Mexico
Mexico
The United Mexican States , commonly known as Mexico , is a federal constitutional republic in North America. It is bordered on the north by the United States; on the south and west by the Pacific Ocean; on the southeast by Guatemala, Belize, and the Caribbean Sea; and on the east by the Gulf of...

**
Peru
Peru
Peru , officially the Republic of Peru , is a country in western South America. It is bordered on the north by Ecuador and Colombia, on the east by Brazil, on the southeast by Bolivia, on the south by Chile, and on the west by the Pacific Ocean....

***
Cuba
Cuba
The Republic of Cuba is an island nation in the Caribbean. The nation of Cuba consists of the main island of Cuba, the Isla de la Juventud, and several archipelagos. Havana is the largest city in Cuba and the country's capital. Santiago de Cuba is the second largest city...

****

* The pronoun can be he heard used in constituent parts of Castile, León and in Eastern Galicia; otherwise it is used only rhetorically or in old or liturgical writings.
**Only used in some small parts of Chiapas and Tabasco, being completely unused in the rest of the country;
***Occurs in the Northern and Southern extremities of the country and is virtually unused in the rest of the country;
****The use of the pronoun is vanishing and is now only heard of on the Eastern side of the country.

Attitudes

The pronoun vos is used with family and friends (T-form

T-V distinction

In sociolinguistics, a T–V distinction is a contrast, within one language, between second-person pronouns that are specialized for varying levels of politeness, social distance, courtesy, familiarity, or insult toward the addressee....

), like tú in other varieties of Spanish, and contrasts with the respectful usted (V-form) which is used with strangers; 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 (with the idea that only Castilian Spanish was good Spanish), but it is now regarded simply as a local variant.

Sources

Voseo Spanish Site dedicated to teaching Argentine Voseo usage Voseo at the Diccionario Panhispánico de Dudas. Real Academia Española (2005). El voseo at Spanish Wikibooks. Norma Beatriz Carricaburo (2003). El voseo en la historia y en la lengua de hoy - Las fórmulas de tratamiento en el español actual. Hotta Hideo (2000). La estandarización y el regionalismo en el voseo del español argentino. Ángel Rosenblat (2000). El castellano en Venezuela. Luis Alberto Roca (2007). Breve historia del habla cruceña y su mestizaje. Anton Toursinov (2005). Formas pronominales de tratamiento en el español actual de Guatemala. Le Voseo