Index / Language / Records / Spanish / Grammar
Who you call what, and which verb form follows. This is the domain where the two standards differ structurally rather than stylistically — Latin America is missing a pronoun Spain has.
The control text · practical
Buenos días. El día 12 de este mes se me cargó en la cuenta un importe de 89,90 dólares que no reconozco. Imagino que se trata de un error: cancelé ese servicio en mayo y conservo el comprobante. Les agradecería que me abonaran el importe y me confirmaran por escrito que la suscripción quedó cancelada. Si no recibo respuesta antes del viernes, presentaré una reclamación. Quedo a la espera.
Where the two part
Latin American · the base
Ustedes is the only plural, formal and informal alike — vosotros does not exist. Vos replaces tú in the River Plate, much of Central America and parts of Colombia, with its own verb forms.
Peninsular · the contrast
Vosotros for the informal plural and ustedes for the formal — a distinction Latin America simply does not make. Vos is archaic.
10 options
Les agradecería que me abonaran el importe. — Anchor A
The tellThird-person plural verbs addressed to a group, formal or not.
Anchor A uses it. Correct across all of Latin America and correct as the formal plural in Spain too, which makes it the safest plural in the language.
In Spain, used with friends, it creates a distance a Peninsular speaker would not have chosen.
Os agradecería que me abonarais el importe.
The tellA verb in -áis or -éis, and the pronoun os.
Required for informal plural in Spain, and its absence there is noticeable.
It does not exist in Latin American Spanish. Producing it there is not a regionalism — it is a foreign form.
¿Cancelaste el servicio? — tú forms, pronoun usually dropped
The tellSecond-person singular endings.
Correct in most of the Spanish-speaking world and the default your other languages predispose you to.
Not correct in the voseo regions, where it can read as foreign or as televised Spanish.
Vos tenés el comprobante. · Vos podés cancelar.
The tellVos with stressed endings: tenés, podés, querés — and the imperative tené, vení.
Non-negotiable if Rioplatense is your target, and it is a coherent system with its own paradigm rather than a variant of tú.
A grammatical commitment: adopting vos means the verb forms, the imperatives and the accent all have to follow.
Voseo with different regional distribution and partly different verb forms
The tellVoseo outside the River Plate, which most course material ignores.
Named so voseo is not presented as exclusively Argentine, which is the common misconception.
Its forms and social distribution vary by country and are not verified in detail here.
Le agradecería que me abonara el importe.
The tellThird-person singular verbs addressed to one person.
Correct everywhere, and the right choice for a first written contact with an institution.
It builds distance. In Spain, sustained with someone who expected tú, it reads as cold.
Usted used with friends, family and children in parts of Colombia
The tellUsted where every other variety would use tú.
A real register difference rather than a phonetic one, and it surprises speakers from elsewhere.
Carried to Madrid or Buenos Aires it would read as extreme formality rather than as regional.
Se solicita el abono del importe y la confirmación escrita de la cancelación.
The tellNo pronoun anywhere; the se removes the person — GRM-05.
The genuine escape hatch: correct in both standards and it sidesteps the whole tú/vos/usted/ustedes/vosotros question.
Cold by construction, and with an individual it reads as evasion rather than courtesy.
Le agradecería… Avísame cuando esté resuelto. — usted, then tú
The tellA third-person form and a second-person imperative in the same message.
On the sheet because it is the characteristic real failure, and it is invisible while writing.
A DELE marker reads it as loss of control rather than as range.
| Language | Same slot, three forms |
|---|---|
| Portuguese | vocês — one plural, Brazilian; vós archaic |
| Italian | voi — one plural; voi also singular-formal in the South |
| Spanish | ustedes in LatAm; ustedes and vosotros in Spain |
The tellSpanish is the only one of your three that has a living informal-plural pronoun distinct from the formal — and only in Spain.
Worth seeing laid out: your Portuguese and Italian both give you one plural, which is exactly what Latin American Spanish gives you too.
It means the vosotros forms are the one paradigm none of your other languages supports at all.