[Tango-L] VOS

[Sergio Vandekier]

Vos  replaces "tu" pronoun second person of singular in Argentina and other 
countries.

Voseo is the use of the second person singular pronoun vos, instead of tú, 
which is often considered the standard.

Vos is used extensively as the primary spoken form of the second-person 
singular in various countries around Latin America, including Argentina, 
Costa Rica, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, Paraguay 
and Uruguay, but only in Argentina, Uruguay, and increasingly in Paraguay, 
is it also the standard written form.

This phenomenon is also gradually taking place in Central America, where the 
most prestigious media are beginning to use the pronoun “vos” instead of 
“tú”: Nicaragua is the perfect example.

In El Salvador, newspaper comics employ voseo, but it is hardly ever found 
in the narrative parts of articles, but may be found in quotations of 
people. Increasingly, billboards and other advertising media are using 
voseo.

In Argentina and Uruguay (known as Rioplatense Castilian) 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 (see Venezuelan Spanish), and in 
various regions of Colombia.

This pronoun comes from the Old Spanish form vos, which was the formal 
expression for the second person of the singular (in contrast with the 
modern usted), while vosotros was the formal expression for the second 
person of the plural.

Nevertheless, vos is now an informal form, used instead of tú. During the 
Middle Ages the second person formal became Vuestra Merced (your grace) and 
vos became a second familiar second person along with or replaciong tu. This 
was the situation when Castilian was brought to the Rio de la Plata (Buenos 
Aires and Montevideo) area and Chile.

In time vos lost currency in Spain but survived in Argentina and Uruguay. 
Vuestra Merced evolved into usted. Note that the term "vosotros" is a 
combined form of two words meaning literally "you others" (vos otros) while 
the term "nosotros" comes from the combined form of two words literally 
meaning "we others" (nos otros) because of the confusion caused by the 
change in the use of vos and tu. It seems to bear some resemblance to the 
use of "you all" (y'all) in the English of the Southern United States

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