[chimeracoder]

> After Argentina's recent election I've been consuming lots of content from there, and it sometimes surprises me how frequently they use vos in things that would seem to call for politeness. Vos itself was formal address in Spain in the time of Cervantes IIRC, it is also the origin of vuestro merced (usted)

vos is not really formal in Argentinian Spanish, although it does share an etymologocal root with vuestro merced/Usted.

Argentinian Spanish is itself pretty different from other Latin American dialects, but in general vos is used interchangeably with tú, to the point where the accusative form of "vos" is also te - ie, "Vos te levantás" instead of "tú te levantas" (note the location of the accents in each example).

The connotations of formality (or lack thereof) are subtle and vary much more widely than you might imagine - far more than the comment limit on HN would permit - but by and large it's better to think of vos as the informal pronoun, and the only question is whether it's used alongside tú, in place of it, or in some weird combination that has its own subtle connotations.

[asveikau]

I know this. What I'm saying is I'm surprised at people using vos where usted seems kind of necessary to me. What I also said is that vos was formal 500 years ago, which is an unrelated observation.

[eternauta3k]

Vos is informal, Usted is formal. That's it. We don't use "Tu" AFAIK.

[totallywrong]

And that depends on the country as well. In Colombia usted can be formal or not, as in parents using it with their children, or among friends, where supposedly tú or vos would be more appropriate.