Fall Quarter '08: Voseo
⊆ 10:28 PM by A. Liebendorfer | college , fall , life , school , spanish , terry hatcher , voseo . | ˜ 3 comments »I'm trying to think of a euphemism. I had a lofty opinion of myself in high school Spanish class, especially the last year. So much that I wasn't surprised in the least to learn I tested into Spanish 341. I was kind of cocky about it, really. I still am.
But every Tuesday and Friday, Professor Porter tears me a new one in Gordy Hall. I consulted my old friend and Spanish teacher this summer, and she said to expect what I now call The Rapture. But thus my latent fuego for Spanish has been rekindled.
The voseo was a ghost in my Spanish studies. To make it brief, many European languages deal with their verbs by sticking on suffixes on roots to show who's doing what and when they're doing it. This goes without saying that it's much --MUCH-- more complicated. Well, Spanish has a dialect in Latin America that uses another word instead of the normal "tú" for you, and that is "vos." What's so weird about it is that how it's used changes from country to country but it still has its own rules. I spent a week searching for the rules to get a straight answer and still nothing.
Then one day last week, I was sitting at the end of a test. I was exhausted and irritated. I had studied until wee hours for that test and I knew the best I could hope for would be a low A. I did what I always do and started flipping through pages. Then, de repente, there it was. A full two pages on el voseo right there in the text book.
A NOTE FOR ANY INTERESTED: The conjugation of the pronoun "vos" varies from country to country, but mostly it is conjugated like Spain's "vosotros" just without the "i." This is different in Chile and Venezuela mostly. In Chile, -ar verbs take of the "s" on the end of the vosotros form and -er and -ir verbs only have "ís." Venezuelan Spanish is faux-Castillian. Vosotros isn't used but vos is conjugated like it. All other tenses are conjugated the same way (but subjunctive uses the opposite vos) and direct and indirect object pronouns are "te."
So while the professor was up there, turning my head upside down about preterit and imperfect, I kept day dreaming about saying "vos." Ok, that's a little extreme, but really, Spanish is bottomless. And my basic understanding of past tenses in Spanish just got thrown into the creek.
So, what's next week?
Who will ever read this and get as much of a kick I would if I had read this, I don't know.
October 6, 2008 at 10:33 AM In High School, every time we asked Senorita Schilling about that word "vosotros" on our verb list, her smile would just drop and she would say in a somber tone: "You don't want to learn about that. Let's move on."
She was also an Ohio grad...it all makes sense now.
October 6, 2008 at 8:12 PM my spanish teacher also went to ou...and every time we hit vosotros she told us to not even bother. this made me laugh.
October 9, 2008 at 1:11 PM We learned vos and vosotros right along with all the other tenses and stuff... Your schools were all weird.