Voseo: Present Tense

In the present indicative, vos has its own set of endings that differ from tú. The good news is that they are exceptionally regular — there are essentially no irregular vos forms in the present, even for verbs that are highly irregular with tú. If you know the ending for each conjugation class, you can produce the vos form of almost any verb on the spot, without worrying about stem changes, irregular roots, or yo-form exceptions.

This page focuses on the Rioplatense / Central American standard, which is the form used in Argentina, Uruguay, Paraguay, most of Central America, and parts of Colombia, Bolivia, and Ecuador. Chilean voseo uses different endings and is covered briefly in Voseo: Other Tenses. For a map of where voseo is dominant, partial, or absent, see Where Voseo Is Used.

Where voseo lives

Voseo is not a curiosity. It is the default second-person singular form for more than 80 million Spanish speakers. Below is a rough breakdown of where you will hear vos in everyday life.

The three endings

The vos present endings come from the old Spanish vosotros forms, minus the -i-:

• -ar verbs: -ás (from -áis)
• -er verbs: -és (from -éis)
• -ir verbs: -ís (identical to the old vosotros -ís)

Note the written accent on the final vowel. It is always present in vos present forms, because the stress always falls on the ending. That makes every vos present form a word stressed on the last syllable with a final vowel, which is why the accent is orthographically required.

Stem-changing verbs become regular

Here is the best thing about voseo in the present: the stem changes disappear. Because the stress in a vos form falls on the ending (-ás, -és, -ís), not on the stem, there is no diphthong. A learner who has been wrestling with puedo / puedes / pueden suddenly discovers that podés is a perfectly regular form.

Notice that querer → querés has no ie diphthong. Compare with tú: tú quieres. The same is true for pensás, cerrás, sentís, servís, and every other stem-changer in the language.

Ser is the only real irregular

The verb ser has its own vos form: sos. This is the one vos form every learner encounters first, usually in the phrase ¿de dónde sos?

Every other common verb follows the regular pattern — even the notoriously irregular tener, venir, decir, hacer:

Note that vas, estás, has, ves, and das are identical for tú and vos. This is because these verbs already had stress on the ending in their tú form — there was nothing to change.

Object and reflexive pronouns stay as te

Even though the subject pronoun is vos, the object and reflexive pronouns are the same as with tú: te for the object, tu / tuyo for the possessive. You would never say "vos se levanta" — it is always vos te levantás.

A rioplatense dialogue

Here is a short exchange between two friends in Buenos Aires. Pay attention to the vos forms, the word che (a casual vocative), and the use of dale (a catch-all "okay / let's go").

Common errors for learners

English-speaking learners tend to make the same handful of mistakes when they first adopt voseo. Here are the big ones.

The first three mistakes come from mixing a tú verb with the pronoun vos. The fourth comes from over-applying the "change pronouns" logic and swapping te for se. The rule is simple: change only the verb ending, keep the object pronoun as te.

Decision table: tú, vos, or usted?

If you are a learner visiting a voseo region, which form should you actually produce? Here is a practical guide.

In Argentina and Uruguay, tú sounds foreign — people will understand you, but you will instantly mark yourself as a non-local or as somebody who learned Spanish from a Spain-based textbook. In Central America, tú is less jarring but still feels bookish; most speakers slide between vos and usted.

More examples across all three classes

Summary table

Social register: when is vos polite, rude, or neutral?

A question learners often ask: "If I use vos with a stranger, am I being rude?" The answer depends heavily on the country.

In Argentina and Uruguay, vos is the neutral informal form. It is not rude. A waiter will vos a customer their own age, and nobody blinks. The formal option is usted, reserved for older people, formal contexts, and a layer of respect. There is no intermediate tú.

In Central America, the picture is more layered. Many speakers use a three-level system: usted for formality, vos for intimacy (family, close friends), and tú as a kind of middle register. Using vos with a stranger in Guatemala or Costa Rica can feel overly familiar or even a little rough, depending on the region. When in doubt, start with usted and let your conversation partner downgrade you to vos.

In Chile, voseo has its own verb forms (tú hablái, tú comí, tú viví, often without the pronoun) and is considered quite informal, even slangy. It is common in speech but almost never in writing. Don't confuse it with Rioplatense voseo — Chilean voseo is a different beast.

Costa Rica is a famous exception: many Costa Ricans use usted for everything, even with close family, and switch to vos only in very familiar contexts. So treating usted as "the formal one" can get you in trouble there.

Questions, negatives, and tag questions

Once you know the vos form, building questions and negatives works exactly like with tú. The word order is identical; only the verb form and pronoun change.

Voseo with usted-class verbs

Some verbs that English speakers find confusing — like parecer (to seem) or gustar (to like) — work the same way in voseo as in tuteo. Gustar uses the indirect object pronoun te, not the subject pronoun, so the form of gustar doesn't change depending on voseo at all:

Notice that with gustar and parecer, we use the clarifying a vos at the start, not vos alone, because vos would imply a subject — but the grammatical subject of gustar is the thing being liked. See gustar and similar verbs for the full story.

Voseo in writing

In the Southern Cone, voseo is fully standard in writing. You will see it in newspapers, novels, advertising, text messages, and social media. Buenos Aires novelists like Cortázar and Borges used it; so do modern writers like Mariana Enríquez. A few registers still default to tú — some academic writing, some older translations, and content aimed at a pan-Hispanic audience — but these are exceptions. For a learner heading to Argentina, writing vos hablás to a local friend is not just acceptable; it's expected.

Practice: change these tú sentences to vos

Next steps

Now that you have the present indicative, continue with Voseo Commands for the affirmative imperative (hablá, comé, vení), and Voseo in Other Tenses for the subjunctive, preterite, and the Chilean variant. For a deeper breakdown of where each form lives, see Voseo Countries.