# Vosotros in Spain: the forms, and when ustedes is still needed

> id: regional.es.vosotros · category: regional · depth: standard · levels: A1, A2 · review: internally_reviewed

**Summary.** Vosotros is the ordinary plural "you" in Spain, with its own endings (habláis, comisteis, hablad), the pronoun os and the possessive vuestro. Ustedes survives but has narrowed to genuinely deferential situations, so in daily life vosotros does almost all the work.

The paradigm is complete and has to be learned as its own column. Present: habláis, coméis, vivís, sois, tenéis, vais. Preterite: hablasteis, comisteis, fuisteis. Imperfect: hablabais, comíais, erais. Future and conditional: hablaréis, hablaríais. Subjunctive: habléis, comáis, tuvierais. Imperative: hablad, comed, venid, sed. The pronoun set is os for both direct and indirect object, and vosotros/vosotras after a preposition (para vosotros). The possessive is vuestro, vuestra, vuestros, vuestras — including the pronoun form el vuestro.

In Spain, vosotros is not the "informal" option so much as the default one. Ustedes has retreated a long way: it is used with clearly deferential addressees — officials, elderly strangers, a formal audience, institutional writing — while shops, restaurants, classrooms, workplaces and service encounters have largely gone over to tú and vosotros. A young Spaniard can go a week without producing ustedes. This is why the textbook four-way grid overstates the case: in practice the working system in Spain is tú/vosotros with a formal register held in reserve.

Two morphological traps catch learners. First, the imperative loses its -d before os: sentaos, callaos, poneos, levantaos — never *sentados*. The one lexical exception is irse, whose traditional form is idos, though the RAE now also admits the colloquial iros. Second, the very common spoken ¡callaros!, ¡sentaros! — infinitive for imperative — is heard constantly but is not standard, so recognise it without producing it in writing. Note also that os is invariable: os lo digo, os habéis ido, os vi ayer.

## Examples
- ¿Vosotros ya habéis terminado? — Have you lot finished already? *(Present perfect + vosotros: two Peninsular features in one short question.)*
- Sentaos, por favor. — Please sit down. *(The imperative drops its -d before os: sentad + os → sentaos, never *sentados*.)*
- Os lo mando por correo esta tarde. — I'll send it to you this afternoon. *(os is invariable and covers both object roles — here indirect, alongside lo.)*
- Niños, venid aquí y traed vuestras cosas. — Kids, come here and bring your things. *(Bare imperative in -d, plus the possessive vuestras.)*

Related: regional.pan.ustedes-vosotros, regional.mx.ustedes, conjugation.imperative.pronoun-attachment, regional.es.perfect-usage

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