Kilo Lingo

Spanish · Chapter 48 · Lesson 14 · Grammar primer

Regional grammar: voseo, ustedes, past tense

The structural differences: voseo (vos tenes, vos sos) in Argentina and beyond, ustedes for everything (no vosotros) in Latin America, and the preterite-vs-perfect split (ya comi vs ya he comido).

The short version

Voseo changes the verb, not the possessive

In Argentina, Uruguay, Paraguay and much of Central America the informal singular you is vos, and the present tense takes final stress: vos tenés, vos podés, vos sos. The mercy is that only the subject pronoun and the verb move. Objects and possessives stay exactly as they are with tú, so it is still te quiero and tu casa.

¿Vos sabés dónde está?

Do you know where it is?

That's the gist. The full article goes deeper - more examples, the edge cases, the why - and the practice below scores like a vocabulary session and earns the same XP.

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Lesson 14 of 22 in this chapter

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