Español en serio
Vos vs tú
Dieser Beitrag erklärt ein wichtiges Thema der spanischen Grammatik (Text auf Englisch).
Many students know the form tú, but then they go to Latin America, listen to Latin music or watch TV series or films, and they have no clue about the form vos. This is a long story about words travelling across the ocean when the Spaniards arrived in America.
👑 Your Majesty, Your Highness, and the like
In Latin America, the pronoun vos is widely used. Spanish conquerors used the forms tú, vos and vuestra merced. The latter would eventually evolve into usted, as I have explained in another blog:
All the Ways to Say “YOU” in Spanish: TÚ, VOSOTROS, USTED and USTEDES Explained Clearly
Tú was used in situations of closeness or trust, vuestra merced to show respect, and vos to address a person of great authority. Apparently, Roman emperors referred to themselves using the form nos, and vos emerged as a way of responding to them. It is basically what happens in English with “Your Majesty”, or what happened in French: “Nous, Louis, par la grâce de Dieu, roi de France et de Navarre”.
From the 16th century onwards, vos was replaced in Spain by vuestra merced, which later evolved into usted, and became the new form of respect.
But let us turn the clocks back. When the Spaniards arrived in America, they preserved the ‘voseo’ because they wished to maintain the status of a powerful interlocutor. In this way, a form that was already falling into disuse in Spain continued to be widely used in the colonial territories. This explains why it does not exist in Peninsular Spanish but does on the other side of the Atlantic. Today, the use of vos extends across Argentina, Uruguay, Paraguay and Costa Rica, as well as regions of Bolivia, Chile, Peru, Ecuador, Colombia, Venezuela, Panama, Nicaragua, Honduras, El Salvador, Guatemala, Mexico, and Cuba. However, it does not have the same connotation in all these countries, but that already goes beyond the explanatory scope of this blog. The form vos is fully accepted by the Real Academia Española as a cultured variant of tú, and it is accompanied by slightly different verb forms.
Example from the episode
Read the full episode here:
Episode 7
Bachelor’s degree in Literature (University of Buenos Aires). Spanish and Literature teacher. Researcher and author of Los premios Nobel de literatura. Una lectura crítica (University of Seville). More than 30 years’ experience teaching Spanish to international students.
One-to-one lessons via Zoom.
Contact: laura@spanishforlondon.com
Abschluss in Literaturwissenschaft (Universität Buenos Aires). Lehrerin für Spanisch und Literatur. Forscherin und Autorin des Buches Los premios Nobel de literatura. Eine lectura crítica (Universität Sevilla). Über 30 Jahre Erfahrung im Unterricht von Spanisch als Fremdsprache.
Einzelunterricht über Zoom.
Kontakt: laura@spanishforlondon.com
