Voseo in Spanish: How to Use Vos in Argentina and Uruguay

What Each One Means Socially

Vos is the normal, unmarked choice with friends, family, classmates, colleagues and, very often, strangers of a similar age. It signals ordinary closeness and equality. It is not rude.

Usted is still available and still used: for respect, for distance, for institutional situations, or when someone is noticeably older. It is not automatically warmer or politer — it can also create distance on purpose.

After Prepositions: vos, Never ti

• a vos — to you
• de vos — from you, about you
• para vos — for you
• por vos — for you, because of you
• sin vos — without you
• con vos — with you (never *contigo)
• entre vos y yo — between you and me

Agreement Stays Singular

The endings come from an old plural, but vos means one person. Everything agrees in the singular:

Never *vos están preparados when you are talking to one person.

You Can Drop the Pronoun

As always in Spanish, the ending already tells you who the subject is:

Use vos explicitly for contrast or emphasis:

Yo llevo los materiales y vos llevás los libros.

Regular Formation

Drop -ar, -er or -ir from the infinitive and add the ending. The stress falls on the last syllable, so the written accent is obligatory.

Good News: Stem Changes Disappear

Verbs that change their stem with tú keep the infinitive stem with vos. This makes voseo more regular, not less.

The Three You Have to Memorize

The forms *habés, *habís, *soi and *vai belong to other varieties or to non-standard speech, not to cultivated Rioplatense.

High-Frequency Verbs

Everyday Questions

Almost No Irregulars

The irregular tú commands are exactly the ones that become predictable with vos:

Only two behave unusually:

• ir → andá. In practice, Rioplatense Spanish borrows the command of andar. Andá a casa. — Go home.
• ser → sé. Sé paciente. — Be patient. (Identical to the tú form.)
• dar → da, with no accent, because it is a single syllable.

In Real Use

Affirmative: Attach the Pronoun

The Accent Moves — Here Is Why

This is the part that trips learners up, and it is completely regular. Spanish accent rules apply to the finished word, not to the original command.

• decí — stressed on the last syllable, ends in a vowel → needs an accent.
• decime — now stressed on the second-to-last syllable, ends in a vowel → no accent.
• decímelo — now stressed on the third-to-last syllable → accent comes back.

So the correct spellings are decime, mirame, sentate, quedate — never *decíme, *miráme, *sentáte.

Negative: the Pronoun Goes First

The verb form used here belongs to the subjunctive, which is the subject of section 7.

No Final -s in the Preterite

You will certainly hear *hablastes, *comistes and *vivistes in casual speech, and there is a historical reason for them, but the RAE does not include them in the cultivated norm. Write hablaste.

Irregular preterites are unchanged too: fuiste, estuviste, tuviste, hiciste, pudiste, pusiste, viniste, dijiste, quisiste.

Two Patterns

Both are heard in Argentina every day:

What Should You Actually Use?

Produce the tú-type forms: no hables, no comas, no vengas, no hagas. They are correct everywhere in the Spanish-speaking world, they are what the RAE treats as the cultivated model, and no Argentine will find them odd.

Recognize the voseante forms: no hablés, no te preocupés, no vengás. These are entirely normal in Argentine speech — you will hear no te preocupés constantly in Buenos Aires — and they tend to sound more colloquial or more emphatic.

In Uruguay and Paraguay the tú-type forms are generally preferred.

Don't Just Add No to a Command

The affirmative and negative forms are built differently:

Never *no vení.

A. Rewrite in Rioplatense Vos

1. Tú eres muy paciente.
2. ¿Tú tienes tiempo hoy?
3. Tú puedes venir conmigo.
4. ¿Dónde vives tú?
5. Tú piensas demasiado.
6. Tú duermes ocho horas.
7. Este regalo es para ti.
8. Quiero hablar contigo.