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Today, the informal second-person plural pronoun vosotros is widely used by Spaniards except in some southwestern regions and in most of the Canary Islands, where its use is rare. Among the former colonies of the Spanish Empire , the use of vosotros and its normal conjugations is also retained in the Philippines and Equatorial Guinea .
It can be used as a formal, emphatic replacement for que in non-defining clauses, for both subjects and direct objects, and it can also be used as a formal, emphatic replacement for el que as the object of some prepositions. Moreover, it is often preferred to el que entirely in certain contexts. In non-defining clauses, the fact that it agrees ...
Formal singular nosotros/nosotras ¡Comamos! "Let us eat!" Used as an order or as an invitation. vosotros/vosotras ¡Comed! "Eat!" Normative plural for informal address, though its use is becoming rare vosotros/vosotras ¡Comer! "Eat!" Common plural used in Spain for informal address, though not accepted by the Real Academia Española: ustedes ...
The formal second-person pronouns (usted, ustedes) take third-person verb forms. The second-person familiar plural is expressed in most of Spain with the pronoun vosotros and its characteristic verb forms (e.g., coméis 'you eat'), while in Latin American Spanish it merges with the formal second-person plural (e.g., ustedes comen).
The pronouns yo, tú, vos, [1] él, nosotros, vosotros [2] and ellos are used to symbolise the three persons and two numbers. Note, however, that Spanish is a pro-drop language , and so it is the norm to omit subject pronouns when not needed for contrast or emphasis.
Below is a comparison table of the conjugation of several verbs for tú and for vos, and next to them the one for vosotros, the informal second person plural currently used orally only in Spain; in oratory or legal language (highly formal forms of Spanish) it is used outside of Spain.
Until the mid-16th century, the short subject forms nos, vos 'we, you' were still found alongside the expanded forms nosotros, vosotros in writing. [34] The shorter form vos is used in Judaeo-Spanish, alongside the expanded vosotros, and the use of non-deferential, singular vos continues in much of Latin America, where it has become known as voseo.
The re-use in some languages of one personal pronoun to indicate a second personal pronoun with formality or social distance – commonly a second person plural to signify second person singular formal – is known as the T–V distinction, from the Latin pronouns tu and vos.