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.

angery

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.

  • RedDawn [he/him]
    ·
    5 months ago

    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.

    • FloridaBoi [he/him]
      ·
      5 months ago

      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

      • CloutAtlas [he/him]
        hexagon
        ·
        5 months ago

        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.

        • FloridaBoi [he/him]
          ·
          5 months ago

          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.

          • CloutAtlas [he/him]
            hexagon
            ·
            5 months ago

            Today, the informal second-person plural pronoun vosotros is widely used by Spaniards except in some southwestern regions and in most of the Canary Islands, where its use is rare.

            Yeah damn I wish someone told me that 72 hours ago