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2 Primarily in Spain; other countries use ustedes as the plural regardless of level of formality. A disused equivalent of vuestro(s)/vuestra(s) is voso(s)/vosa(s). [1] Note: Usted and ustedes are grammatically third person even though they are
1 Only in countries with voseo; Ladino has vos as the formal form, instead of usted. 2 Primarily in Spain; elsewhere, ustedes is used in the plural regardless of the level of formality. 3 Reflexive. Usted may be abbreviated as Ud. or Vd. A disused equivalent of vuestro(s) / vuestra(s) is voso(s) / vosa(s). [1]
In those regions it replaces tuteo, i.e. the use of the pronoun tú and its verbal forms. Voseo can also be found in the context of using verb conjugations for vos with tú as the subject pronoun (verbal voseo). [1] In all regions with voseo, the corresponding unstressed object pronoun is te and the corresponding possessive is tu/tuyo. [2]
This means that speaking to a group of friends a Spaniard will use vosotros, while a Latin American Spanish speaker will use ustedes. Although ustedes is semantically a second-person form, it is treated grammatically as a third-person plural form because it originates from the term vuestras mercedes ('your [pl.] mercies,' sing. vuestra merced).
The use of usted and ustedes as a polite form of address is universal. However, there are variations in informal address. Ustedes replaces vosotros in part of Andalusia, the Canary Islands, and Latin America, except in the liturgical or poetic of styles. In some parts of Andalusia, the pronoun ustedes is used with the standard vosotros endings.
The plural imperative uses the ustedes form (i. e. the third person plural subjunctive, as corresponding to ellos). As for the subjunctive forms of vos verbs, most speakers use the classical vos conjugation, employing the vosotros form minus the i in the final diphthong. However, some prefer to use the tú subjunctive forms like in Paraguay.
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.
The possessive for usted and ustedes is su(s) as for other third-person pronouns. The ambiguity that this causes (especially considering that su(s) already covers "his", "her", "its" and "their") can be alleviated by treating usted(es) as a noun and thereby saying la casa de ustedes instead of su casa.