What do you think? Can you help me? Are you feeling okay? Have you ever heard phrases like that? Maybe you can understand them, but they sound a little strange to you, right? Hello, my name is Mark Hoff and I am a PhD student in Hispanic Linguistics in the Department of Spanish and Portuguese. One of my areas of research is morphosyntactic variation. And today I'm going to talk about a morpho-syntactic phenomenon that is heard in many Spanish-speaking countries, which is the voseo. If we look at these sentences, I imagine you would say "you think," "you can," and "you feel." But some countries in Latin America use these different forms to express the same meaning. These are the forms of vos. But what is vos, and how is it conjugated? Also, where is vos used, and how does it vary from country to country? These are the topics we are going to talk about now. First, to talk about vos, we have to understand what pronouns are. If we look at these sentences, "Sandra is Uruguayan", we can express the same meaning with the subject pronoun "she". "She is Uruguayan." We also have object pronouns, in this case, direct object pronouns. We have "I saw Martin," and we can express the same thing by saying "I saw him." We also have preposition objects. In the case of "The cake is for Agus and Anto", we can also say "The cake is for them" once we know who that pronoun refers to. This is important because voseo is the use of the pronoun "vos" and the corresponding verbal forms. But what kind of pronoun is it? What function does it have? It is a second person singular pronoun. That is, it is used with more or less the same function as "tú". So in Mexico City or Madrid you say "tú tiene", but in Buenos Aires, for example, to express the same meaning you say "vos tenés". But how do you conjugate vos? How did we get to these forms? Well, the easiest way is to start with the forms of "vosotros", so, "vosotros habláis, queréis, y deciz". What we do is simply remove the "i", whenever there is a diphthong or two vowels in the ending. So "habláis" becomes "hablás", "queréis" becomes "querés" and "decís" stays the same because there is no diphthong, so there is no change and the forms of vosotros and vos are exactly the same. But remember: although the forms are similar, the referents of vos and vosotros are different. Vos is singular while vosotros is plural. The place where each form is used is also different. Vos is used in the Americas while vosotros is used only in Spain. But what if you don't know the shape of you? Well, don't worry because we can also use the infinitive as a starting point. We simply remove the "r" and put an "s" in its place. So speaking would be "you speak", wanting would be "you want" and saying would be "you say". The only problem with this method is that it leaves us with two exceptions that are easy to explain if we used the you. Those exceptions are "sos" and "vas". Now that we live in the present indicative, I have good news: These forms that you see on the slide, you don't need to learn them again because they are the same for you. So the present subjunctive, all the past tense forms including the past subjunctive, the future, and the conditional are all the same between you and vos, and there is no need to learn more forms. Now we move on to mandates or imperatives. In fact, the vos commands are very easy, easier than the tú commands, because they are completely regular. So the command of you of the verb to speak is "hablá" versus the tú which is "habla". Note that the only difference is the intonation or stress of the voice. We also have eating, "eat" versus "eat", the same thing happens. And in the case of tener and decir, which in the tú paradigm are irregular verbs, the vos is completely regular, then it would be "tené cuidado" and "decide la verdad". There are no irregularities. Now going back a bit to the conversation from before about pronouns. Vos is the subject pronoun, like the phrase "Vos sos alto." But we also know that pronouns can have other syntactic functions, such as direct and indirect objects. So the form of vos is "te" in these cases, just like the paradigm of tú. So we say "I saw you on the parquet floor," and "I made you a cake." The object of the preposition is different, however, and there we have "vos": "This gift is for you," versus "for you." And again the possessive is the same as the you. We say "You are at home" and "This house is yours," just like you. Until now I explained a version of vos with its conjugations, but in reality there is not just one vos, but it is used in different countries and in each one there are small differences in conjugations. So let's look at where vos is used and how it differs. As you can see on the map, there are many different countries where vos is used and there are differences in each one. So in countries like Argentina, Paraguay, and most of Uruguay, we see that vos is the only form used. There is practically no you. While in other countries such as parts of Peru or Bolivia, the vos coexists with the tú. The map also distinguishes between countries where voseo is found in writing or only in colloquial speech. In some countries like Argentina, vos is used in all social spheres. While in other places, due to prescriptive notions, vos is considered less correct and is not used in writing. As we saw on the map, the use of vos varies from country to country, but also depends on other social factors, such as the age of the interlocutors, socioeconomic class, and even gender. Since vos is an informal pronoun, it is important to be careful if we want to show respect, because vos can sometimes be inappropriate in these contexts. It can also say a lot about the social class of the people who use it. Additionally, in some areas there are gender associations, for example tú may be associated more with women's speech, and vos may be used more among men. Now that we have a little experience of the social context of vos, where it is used and how it is conjugated, let's practice a little using an advertisement from Buenos Aires. In this advertisement, it says "You'll like yourself." This refers to giving yourself a "like" on Facebook. So let's identify together what the voseante forms are. First we have "Te likeás". We have the reflexive pronoun "te" which is the vos and also "likeás", a conjugation of vos. Then we have the object of the preposition "a vos mismo" instead of "a ti mismo". Then we have a verb conjugation "hacés" instead of "haces" and two possessives that, as I said before, are the same as the possessives of tú. We have "your cell phone" and " your thing." And finally we have "pedí". It looks like the preterite form of the "I" form, but in this case it is a command from you: "I asked you." Well, that's it. Now that you know where vos is used, how to conjugate it, and how to use it, don't be afraid to put it into practice. You'll see that Argentinians, Nicaraguans, and even Costa Ricans like people to learn their way of speaking. Go for it! You can do it!