Spanish verbs (Basics II): Usted y ustedes (Ep. 12)

In the last podcast I explain you the 10 personal pronouns that we have in Spanish or, at least, in the northen Spanish variation that I speak and that I teach to my students.

But, we must add two more: USTED and USTEDES. If you are used to listen American Spanish, you probabily hearded this two pronouns many times in different communicative situations (Te lo recuerdo: listen to episode 10)

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These pronouns are used in my Spanish variation just in one case: politness, respect or formality.

• EXAMPLE 1: When we run into with that parent that you met first time yesterday evening in the parent meeting of the school of your children (FORMALITY, ACCUAITANCE)
• EXAMPLE 2: When we run into with our lovely neighbour who is 80 year old (AGE)
• EXAMPLE 3: When we run into with a police men or women or we run into our boss in the street, (RANK STATUS).

And we have two forms: USTED (singular) or USTEDES (plural). Usted instead of TÚ but in formal way; and USTEDES is usted instead of VOSOTROS in formal way.

But this is not so easy because you will see, in the next podcasts when we begin to conjugate our first vebs in Presente, that USTED works morphologically as ÉL or ELLA despite referring TÚ, and usted works morphologically as ELLOS or ELLAS despite referring VOSOTROS in a formal way.

Example: USTED (tú) es y USTEDES (vosotros) son