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I used "Vosotros sois..." in a conversation last weekend
(hexbear.net)
They laughed. Apparently picking up Spanish from your Spaniard friend has some downsides.
As in South American backpackers find it funny/amusing this drunk Chinese guy in an Australian pub used the Castellano equivalent of "y'all" in a sentence.
They were ultimately nice about it, much better than the time my (English speaking) Canadian coworker tried to speak to some Parisians in school level Québécois and they scoffed and continued in English.
I've always wondered how people take that kind of thing. I've not had anyone to practice my Spanish with yet. I can't think the same thing would happen with English. If someone spoke British English to me as a second language, I would just be impressed and let the conversation going without mentioning that we don't quite say this or that in the same way here. Unless they ask; I've had some fun nights with with international friends, speaking about different ways to say things in different places.
The Parisians are parody of the delightful end of Lingua Franca. When they can't turn on their reactors for lack of uranium, they'll wonder where their influence went.
A lot of people from Latin America will be used to speaking with people from all over Latin America, which means different vocabulary and accents, even the “vos” person used in countries like Argentina, etc. But nowhere in LatAm is vosotros used, and interactions with actual Spaniards are rare, so it may be a really novel thing. This just from my own experience in Mexico, Ecuador, Paraguay, I have friends and acquaintances from all over south and Central America, people from Chile get given a lot of shit for their Spanish. But in all my interactions I’ve never heard somebody actually using vosotros except for in movies from Spain.
I think there’s even differences within Spain such that “vosotros sois” isn’t used by all Spaniards. Ultimately, “ustedes son” also had to come from somewhere in Spain to eventually become dominant in latam
The Andulasians did it....
Well, the way it was explained was "vosotros sois" is casual and "ustedes son" is more respectful. Like addressing your acquaintances or friends vs addressing your bosses.
Voseo is a weird subject and so is the use of vosotros. In Peru where I'm from, 2nd person plural is only ustedes for both formal and informal but 2nd person singular, tu is informal and usted is formal. Other countries and regions have what you're saying plus a 3rd level of further familiarity.
To my ears, saying "vosotros sois" comes off like reading scripture or arcane royal decrees. I immediately thought of Pan's Labyrinth where the faun speaks like that and the human characters mostly do not.
Yeah damn I wish someone told me that 72 hours ago
It's also fairly casual, it's the informal form of ustedes, which LatAm doesn't even have anymore.
So it'd be more like if you ran into someone who not only was using British English, but specifically spoke Cockney and used the phrase "apples and pears" to refer to stairs completely unironically, on the complete other side of the planet.
I can kinda see how that would be funny.
If it's an informal form of "you" fallen out of use, wouldn't it be more like someone unironically using "thou" in a sentence?
It would be more like if most British people still use thou and insist Americans, Canadians, Australians, etc are wrong for not using thou.
Haha 😂 I see now.