If you are learning peninsular Spanish, you will never need to produce voseo — nobody in Spain uses it, and using it yourself would sound jarring or affected. But the moment you watch an Argentine film, read a Mafalda strip, listen to a Uruguayan podcast, or talk to anyone from Buenos Aires, Montevideo, Rosario, or large parts of Central America, you will hear forms like vos sos, vos tenés, vení, mirá. This page exists so you can recognize voseo instantly, understand what it means socially, and not be thrown when a perfectly normal "tú quieres" comes out as "vos querés."
Voseo is not slang and not incorrect. In Argentina and Uruguay it is the prestige standard — what you hear on the news, what is taught in schools, what appears in published novels. It coexists with peninsular tú the way American English coexists with British English: same language, different defaults.
What voseo actually is
In medieval Spanish, vos was a formal singular pronoun (like French vous) that competed with tú. As "usted" rose from "vuestra merced" in the 16th–17th centuries, vos lost ground in Spain and disappeared from peninsular usage. But it survived in the colonies, particularly in regions distant from the viceregal centers of Mexico City and Lima, and over time it inverted its register: instead of being formal, vos became the intimate singular — the pronoun you use with friends, family, and equals. That is its meaning today.
Vos sos mi mejor amigo.
You are my best friend.
Tú eres mi mejor amigo.
You are my best friend.
The first is what an Argentine or Uruguayan would say to a close friend; the second is the peninsular equivalent. Same meaning, same intimate register, different system.
The forms: present indicative
Voseo has its own conjugation in the present indicative and the affirmative imperative — and almost nowhere else. In every other tense it borrows the tú forms. Memorize the present and the imperative; the rest follows.
The present-tense rule is mechanical: take the vosotros form, drop the -i-, and you have the vos form. So vosotros habláis → vos hablás, vosotros tenéis → vos tenés, vosotros vivís → vos vivís (no change in -ir verbs because there is no -i- to drop).
| Infinitive | Tú (Spain) | Vos (Río de la Plata) |
|---|---|---|
| hablar | hablas | hablás |
| comer | comes | comés |
| vivir | vives | vivís |
| tener | tienes | tenés |
| poder | puedes | podés |
| querer | quieres | querés |
| ser | eres | sos |
| haber (aux) | has | has |
Notice what disappears: the stem changes. Peninsular puedes, quieres, tienes (with diphthongization) become flat podés, querés, tenés in voseo. This is because the stress moved off the stem onto the ending, so the diphthong never triggers. The only truly irregular form is sos (from ser); everything else follows the drop-the-i rule.
¿Vos qué querés tomar?
What do you want to drink?
Sos un genio, te lo digo en serio.
You're a genius, I mean it.
¿Vos podés venir mañana o tenés que trabajar?
Can you come tomorrow, or do you have to work?
The forms: affirmative imperative
The voseo imperative is even simpler than the present: take the infinitive, drop the -r, and put an accent on the final vowel. Hablar → hablá, comer → comé, venir → vení, decir → decí. There are no irregulars — the famous peninsular irregulars (ten, ven, di, haz, sal, pon) all vanish.
| Infinitive | Tú imperative (Spain) | Vos imperative |
|---|---|---|
| hablar | habla | hablá |
| venir | ven | vení |
| decir | di | decí |
| hacer | haz | hacé |
| poner | pon | poné |
| salir | sal | salí |
| tener | ten | tené |
| ir | ve | andá (suppletive — "ve" is not used) |
Vení, mirá esto.
Come, look at this.
Decime la verdad.
Tell me the truth.
Andá a comprar pan, por favor.
Go buy some bread, please.
Decime is decí + the enclitic me; the natural penultimate stress on de-CI-me needs no written accent. Andá (from andar) supplants ve as the voseo command for "go" — ve a comprar simply doesn't appear in voseo dialects.
The negative imperative, in most voseo regions, uses the tú-subjunctive form: no hables, no vengas, no comas. Rioplatense speakers will accept no hablés / no vengás as well, with the accent shifted, but the unstressed tú-subjunctive is more common in writing. Don't worry about choosing — both are understood.
Object and reflexive pronouns
Vos uses te for the reflexive and the direct/indirect object — exactly like tú. There is no separate object pronoun. This is one reason voseo is easy to recognize but hard to fully spot: the only visible markers are the subject vos, the present-tense verb form, and the imperative. Everything else (te, tu, tuyo, contigo) is identical to tú usage… except contigo, which in voseo becomes con vos.
Te llamo después, ¿dale?
I'll call you later, OK?
Quiero ir con vos al cine.
I want to go to the movies with you.
Tu hermana te está buscando.
Your sister is looking for you.
Where you will hear it
Voseo is the dominant or near-universal informal form in:
- Argentina (all regions, including in formal media and education)
- Uruguay (universal, alongside some tuteo in Montevideo educated speech)
- Paraguay (alongside Guaraní)
- Most of Central America: Nicaragua, Costa Rica, Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador (with regional variation)
- Parts of Colombia (Paisa region, Valle del Cauca), Venezuela (Zulia), Chile (with a distinct chileno conjugation: vos hablái, vos comís, vos vivís, with the final -s often aspirated; the form is informal and socially stigmatized in Chile, unlike in Argentina)
In Spain, voseo is completely absent from everyday speech. The only place a Spaniard encounters vos as a singular is in religious texts, in archaic formal addresses to royalty in old films, or in literature set in medieval or early modern Spain — where vos is actually the opposite, an old formal pronoun, and survives only as a deliberate archaism.
Vos, señor, sois el rey legítimo.
You, sir, are the rightful king — archaic peninsular formal vos, the kind of line you'd find in a historical novel.
How to handle voseo as a peninsular learner
Recognition is the goal. When you hear vos sos, your brain should map it instantly to "tú eres" and move on. The same with vení → ven, tenés → tienes, mirá → mira, querés → quieres. Practice this conversion until it is automatic; then you can read Borges, watch El secreto de sus ojos, or chat with a porteño without any cognitive drag.
Common mistakes
❌ Vos quieres venir conmigo.
Incorrect — mixes vos with the tú verb and the tú prepositional form. Pick one system.
✅ Vos querés venir conmigo. / Tú quieres venir conmigo.
Either: 'You want to come with me' in vos or in tú — but don't blend them.
❌ Vos tienes razón.
Incorrect — vos never takes the stem-changing 'tienes'. The voseo form is flat: tenés.
✅ Vos tenés razón.
You're right.
❌ Quiero ir contigo al cine.
Strictly speaking not wrong, but jarring in voseo speech — once you've chosen vos as the subject pronoun, the corresponding prepositional form is 'con vos', not the tú-form 'contigo'.
✅ Quiero ir con vos al cine.
I want to go to the movies with you — voseo replaces 'contigo' with 'con vos'.
❌ Vos, ven aquí ahora mismo.
Incorrect mixture — vos with peninsular imperative 'ven'. Either go fully tú ('Tú, ven aquí') or fully vos ('Vos, vení acá').
✅ Vos, vení acá ahora mismo.
You, come here right now — consistent voseo, including 'acá' rather than 'aquí'.
❌ Don Carlos, ¿vos qué opinás?
Incorrect register — combining the respectful 'don Carlos' with the informal voseo form. In any voseo region, the polite address for an older or respected person is 'usted', not 'vos'. The correct form is 'Don Carlos, ¿usted qué opina?'
Key takeaways
Voseo is a complete, prestige-standard alternative to tú used by tens of millions of speakers, but it is foreign to peninsular Spanish. As a learner of Spain Spanish, your job is to recognize without producing: map vos → tú, hablás → hablas, vení → ven, sos → eres, con vos → contigo. Do this fluently and the whole Río de la Plata literary and cinematic tradition opens up without any friction.
Now practice Spanish
Reading grammar gets you part of the way. The exercises are where it sticks — free, no signup needed.
Start learning Spanish→Related Topics
- Tú vs usted: tratamiento singularA2 — Peninsular Spanish has tilted hard toward tú in the past fifty years. Usted is now reserved for genuine formality — much narrower than in most of Latin America. Learn the modern Spanish defaults, the verb agreement rule that catches every learner, and the situations where usted still matters.
- Vosotros vs ustedes: el sistema españolA1 — In peninsular Spanish, vosotros is the everyday informal plural "you" — alive and used constantly — while ustedes is reserved for genuine formality. Learn when each is required, what verb endings each takes, and why the Latin American merger does not apply in Spain.
- Pronombres personales sujeto: visión generalA1 — The full set of Spanish subject pronouns (yo, tú, él, ella, usted, nosotros, vosotros, ellos, ellas, ustedes) — what each one means, when to use it, and the peninsular split between vosotros (informal plural) and ustedes (formal plural).
- Todos los pronombres personales: tabla completaA2 — The complete master reference of Spanish personal pronouns in their five forms — subject, direct object, indirect object, prepositional, and reflexive — with the peninsular vosotros/os column made fully visible.
- Imperativo afirmativo de tú: regularA1 — The simplest of all Spanish imperatives — for regular verbs the affirmative tú command is identical to the 3rd-person singular present indicative.
- Presente de indicativo: verbos regulares en -arA1 — The six present-indicative endings for regular -ar verbs in peninsular Spanish, including the all-important vosotros form habláis.