Vosostros

Back in seventh grade, I remember talking about the vosotros form in my Spanish class with Profa O. I always though vosotros was pretty weird, because we never used it. We learned it, but I never actually used the vosotros form of any verb in conversation. When my peers and I first started learning about verb conjugations, we were told that the vosotros form was used almost no where in the Spanish-speaking world--except Spain. (For those of you uninlightened folks, the pesky vosotros is basically the Spanish answer to "y'all".)

At the time, it seemed obvious to me that I would probably never travel to Spain, because, well, Central and South America are much closer. And since they don't use the vosotros form there, sometime in the beginning of learning Spanish, I decided I didn't really need to pay much attention to vosotros.

Well, guess who's used vosotros more in the last week than all her years of studying Spanish before? Guess who's found herself frantically looking up the ways to conjugate verbs in the vosotros form? And guess who's found out that they practically NEVER use the ustedes form here? (Uninlightened folks, the ustedes is another option for a plural you, like vosotros is to ustedes as "y'all" is to "you guys.") 

And, get this, ustedes is apparently formal, like usted, which they also don't use often here. If I was ever told that ustedes was formal, it must have been when I was twelve and tuning out everything invovling vosotros vs ustedes. So in my first few days here, with vosotros still awkwardly catching in my throat everytime I tried to use it, I'd often default to ustedes. And get a few odd looks in response. 

So listen up kiddos, become friends with that vosotros form! Or one day you'll spend an entire Friday night familiarizing yourself with vosotros, like I plan on doing tonight.