Spanish for Children (2nd person plural).....

[Tammy]

Are you all learning the 2nd person plural....since it is only for speakers in Spain? It seems a little confusing to me.....

 

How are you all handling it?

 

Tammy

[sagira]

Vosotros, eh? Yes, we had to learn that too. Never used it again, though. I only heard a co-worker from Spain using it. In other countries everybody uses Ustedes. When I use it it sounds like saying "thy" in English, or archaic.

[Veritaserum]

I learned it and I think it's good to know. One of my best friends is Argentine and they use the singular vos instead of tu. That was never covered in my Spanish classes. ;) I learned it just from speaking with her. I think the conjugation for vos is related to the conjugation rules for vosotros.

 

Back to your question, though. In Spain I think they use both vosotros and ustedes. Vosotros would be used when talking to your friends or younger people like your kids. Ustedes would be used for talking with older folks or in a formal setting.

[Matryoshka]

Vosotros is actually used almost exclusively in Spain (instead of Ustedes). I never had to use it when I traveled to Mexico, but I was sure glad I had learned it when I spent a semester in Spain.

 

Spain seems far away, but a lot of the exchange and semester abroad programs go there - you never know when you'll need it! By avoiding it you could end up limiting options. And the vos conjugation used in Argentina is indeed related to the vosotros conjugation (though it's a bit different), but if you know vosotros it's easy to learn. Which makes reading Mafalda comics oh so much more fun. :)

 

ETA: Oh, and if your dc ever end up studying Spanish literature, vosotros will come in very handy indeed.

[sagira]

I learned it and I think it's good to know. One of my best friends is Argentine and they use the singular vos instead of tu. That was never covered in my Spanish classes. ;) I learned it just from speaking with her. I think the conjugation for vos is related to the conjugation rules for vosotros.

 

Back to your question, though. In Spain I think they use both vosotros and ustedes. Vosotros would be used when talking to your friends or younger people like your kids. Ustedes would be used for talking with older folks or in a formal setting.

 

:iagree:

 

I meant to say "only Ustedes" in the majority of South American countries.

[Jean in Wisc]

It is rather painless to learn it now. It is a lot harder to suddenly find yourself taking a Spanish class in Spain while studying abroad in college and realize that you have to try and learn, memorize, and use it as of yesterday! I had no idea that I was going to major in Spanish when I started taking Spanish in high school.

 

Jean

[KAR120C]

We use three separate resources for Spanish. Our reader and our CDs don't use vosotros at all (so it's "Latin American" Spanish), but the book we use for grammar exercises does.

 

So he's not getting it all the time, but enough that he'll know what it is if he hears it.

[Renai]

Go ahead and learn it. The couple of Spanish (Spain) natives I'm acquainted with never used it, but the Spanish homeschooling yahoo group I'm a part of I see it sometimes. We also read it all the time in the Bible. I still haven't taken the time to actually sit down and figure it out- I'm learning by osmosis :D. So, yeah, you can go ahead and learn it :).