Tú vs Usted in Spanish: The Only Guide You'll Ever Need (2023)

FAQs

Tú vs Usted in Spanish: The Only Guide You'll Ever Need? ›

This is the general rule: Use tú for informal situations such as with friends, children, young people, people you know very well. Use usted (Ud.) for formal situations such as in a job interview, in a bank, with elderly people, with someone you don't know or somone you have just met.

If you're a child, teen or young adult, use usted with people older than you. Tú is acceptable to use with people younger than you, friends and close family. In work situations, use tú for people who you know relatively well. Tú implies a kind of friendship, while usted highlights respect.

In English tú and usted both translate to “you.” The main difference between these two words is that usted is only used to address people formally. In most Latin American countries we only use tú with family members, friends, or people we estimate are of a similar age and social status as us.

Tú is the second-person singular subject pronoun “you” in Spanish, and it's used for informal treatment, while usted is for formal. They are used in almost every Spanish-speaking country.

In Spain, the singular second-person subject pronouns are tú (informal “you,” one person) and usted (formal “you,” one person). The plural forms are vosotros/vosotras (informal men or mixed groups/a group of all women) and ustedes (formal, group). Latin America is the same, except that vosotros typically isn't used.

So, remember to use usted when speaking to a teacher, a police officer, a boss, or someone in a position of power.

Using Usted

There are some obvious situations when usted is called for: a child speaking to a parent. a student speaking to a teacher. a patient speaking to a doctor.

Yet, Usted in Spanish used in Spain still exists and is used daily. However, there are very specific situations in which Usted is used. The safest way to manage this tricky situation is to listen to how the people speak to you and just 'do the same'.

Usted translates to “you” in English, and so does tú. Spanish speakers use both, so the tricky part can be deciding which one to use. Essentially, you choose based on the formality of the relationship.

Usted is not falling out of use in Spain, Spanish society has changed and usted reflects a certain way society interacts. Usted is a way to mark distance and respect when speaking, the difference is not in the Spanish language but in how Spaniards mark distance and respect now as opposed to then.

Can usted and tú be used interchangeably? ›

The difference between su vs tu is the same as the one between tú and usted: tu is the informal way of saying “your,” while su is the formal one. The same people you'd use tú with, you'd also use tu, and the same applies for usted and su.

A pronoun replaces a noun in order to avoid repetition. Subject pronouns function as the subject of a verb. Unlike English, the use of subject pronouns is optional in Spanish.

When using the formal version, use the “usted” (singular) or “ustedes” (plural) form. In Mexico, it's not necessary to differentiate. The same goes for the second-person plural (used when addressing a group, such as “you all”). In Spain, you should use “vosotros,” whereas in Mexico you use “ustedes.”

Usted commands, like tú commands, are used to tell a person what to do. However, we use usted commands in more formal settings or to imply respect. To make an usted command, use the él/ella/usted form of the present simple subjunctive.

I quickly learned that using “vos” (referred to as voseo) instead of “tú” (also called tuteo) to say “you” is a common practice in many Latin American countries, including some parts of Colombia. In Colombia, voseo sits somewhere between “tú” and “usted” in formality, and can often be used with friends or family.

After the French-speaking Normans invaded in 1066, English changed in response. By the 13th century, thou became the informal “you” and ye became the formal “you,” making it similar to the French vous/tu distinction. The separation of the two “you”s remained until at least the 17th century.

We're obviously not saying that you don't respect somebody you are familiar with, but you would use TÚ to address children, family members, someone who is younger than you are… and you use USTED to address a stranger, your boss, a police officer, your doctor.

'Tu' is used by parents towards their children's friends, but when parents meet parents it is always 'vous' unless they have become friends. Within families, everyone says 'tu'. This was not the case in the 18th century and occasionally older generations are still being called 'vous' by their grand-children.

The general rule of thumb is to use tu when speaking to children and friends, and vous for adults, strangers, and more than one person.

Vosotros is used when an individual person or speaker is addressing a group of 2 or more people. Vosotros in English stands for “you” as the plural “you and others.”

Do you use usted for family members? ›

Most people in Mexico also use "usted" with their grandparents, their friends' parents, and sometimes even their own parents or other family members who are older than them. In general, you can use it with anyone who looks older than you — even if you just met them randomly on the street.

"Vosotros" is not used because it is not useful outside of Spain. However, most conjugation tables include it, probably because it makes the whole personal pronoun structure of the language very symmetrical. It´s used more than Uds. in Spain.

'Nosotros' means 'we' and is used in American Spanish and Peninsular Spanish. 'Vosotros' is used exclusively in peninsular Spanish. It is plural, informal 'you' roughly equivalent to you guys/y'all in North American English.

You can also use it when you want to express a certain level of intimacy with someone. Most adults address children using tú. Usted signifies a more respectful way of talking to someone, such as a new acquaintance, an older person, or someone you consider to be of higher rank.

Portuguese. In the north-western part of Spain, Galicia is the mother-land of the Portuguese mother tongue. It's widely considered the closest language to Spanish – the lexical similarity is approximated at 89%.

People of Madrid, and most parts of Spain, pronounce the letters z and c (when before an e or i) different from people in Latin America. This difference in pronunciation is what's called the “Spanish lisp.”

Some people talk about dormant or passive bilingualism, but there is nothing passive in understanding a language. Your brain works at full speed to process foreign sounds and give them meaning. So, when you can understand and read Spanish but cannot speak it, you're receptively bilingual.

The letters k and w do not occur in Spanish words unless the word has been borrowed from another language such as English or even Japanese. For example, el karate is considered a “Spanish” noun, even though the k is not a Spanish letter. In Spanish, there are two ways to produce the sound of the English letter k.

Because the term ustedes is spoken and understood everywhere, including Spain, it is usually the translation for 'you guys' in Spanish courses, while vosotros may or may not be taught.

Which two letters are not often used in Spanish? ›

In 2010, the Royal Spanish Academy officially removed two letters (ch and ll) from the alphabet, making it 27 letters instead of 29.

Vos in Mexican Spanish is only used in the southern states of Tabasco and Chiapas in a social context. In the case of Central America, the majority of countries use the pronoun vos.

In Latin America: Vosotros is not used. Ustedes is used both as a plural of tú in informal situations and of usted in formal ones.

You will not hear people using the word “vosotros” in Latin America. We only use ustedes. Vosotros is used in Spain only (and not even the whole of Spain, there are parts, like Canarias and Western Andalucía where they don't use vosotros). So if you are learning the Spanish of Latin America, just only ever use ustedes.

Michael: As you may have noticed, the subject pronoun in Spanish sentences is often omitted. This is because the conjugation of Spanish verbs is enough to show the person (first person, second person, or third person) and number (singular or plural) of the subject.

Reflexive pronouns

A reflexive pronoun cannot replace the subject of a sentence, such as in "Burcu and myself are taking that class together." Instead, use a personal pronoun: "Burcu and I are taking that class together" or "Burcu and I myself are taking that class together."

Spanish object pronouns can appear before or after the verb, depending on the sentence structure. If the main verb is conjugated, the object pronoun should come before verb. For example: (Yo) te amo.

We're obviously not saying that you don't respect somebody you are familiar with, but you would use TÚ to address children, family members, someone who is younger than you are… and you use USTED to address a stranger, your boss, a police officer, your doctor.

We use the informal style when speaking to a friend, a family member or a child. We use the formal style when speaking to someone in a position of power or someone we are meeting for the first time. Both the subject pronouns and the verbs used in a sentence tell you whether you are speaking formally or informally.

Usted commands, like tú commands, are used to tell a person what to do. However, we use usted commands in more formal settings or to imply respect. To make an usted command, use the él/ella/usted form of the present simple subjunctive.

Would you address one of your school principals using tú or usted? ›

As a general rule, you would use usted when addressing strangers, your teachers, people in authority, or a person you address by his or her last name. Tú is used with family, very good friends, people you would address by their first name, children, pets and the Diety.