Grammarama Articles on Spanish

Although this article is a continuation of “The “voseo” in Argentina (Part I)” and “The “voseo” in Argentina (Part II)”, it can be read independently. In the first article we referred to the widespread  use of “vos,” which is to such an extent that “usted” is practically not used in some Argentine areas. In the second, we started to analyze the uses of the personal pronoun “vos”, as well as the verb forms and prepositions that accompany it, with the commitment to making these thoughts understandable to all readers. Therefore, the expressive and communicative features of language were focused on. We also said that “vos” and “tú” generally use the same verb forms and only in two cases are the verb forms different: the present tense of the indicative mood and the affirmative imperative mood. The features of the indicative verb forms are described in this article.

Class material for Spanish classes.The musician Alfredo Zitarrosa composed this zamba thinking about that special someone. (Note that the zamba is an Argentine folk genre of music).

Verb form of the Present tense

The verbs in the Present tense of the indicative mood typically represent the actions or moods that are experienced as part of a daily routine. (Also they refer to situations that happen during the course of the present discourse.) “I always remember you fondly”, a host would say his friends whom he had invited to have a drink or a lemonade.

The verb form of “vos” in Present tense is a bit different from that of “tú”. There are two separate methods used to generate the verb forms. For simplicity, we will focus only on the method which uses the infinitive as its starting point. The main verb, called the infinitive, is taken. (These Spanish verbs end in –ar, -er or –ir). You add a written accent to the vowel of the last syllable, then you drop the final “r” and replace it with “s”. For example, for the infinitive of the verb “querer” (want), applying this rule gives (vos) “querés” (you want).

Exceptions to this rule are: 1) (vos) “vas” (you go), (vos) “das” (you give), (vos) “ves” (you see), and (vos) has (you have, “have” as an auxiliary verb) whose infinitive verbs are “ir” (go), “dar” (give), “ver” (see), and “haber” (have), respectively (they are considered exceptions because they do not follow the rule explained above and, in addition, they preserve the verb form of the Present tense of “tú”);  2) (vos) “sos” (you are), which is completely different from (tú) “eres”, the verbal form in the Present tense of “tú”, whose infinitive is, in either case, “ser” (be). Note that when a foreigner visits Argentina, he/she is often asked: “¿De dónde sos?” (“Where are you from?”).

The features of the affirmative imperative mood along with some other thoughts are presented in “The “voseo” in Argentina (Part IV).”