Native USA here. My grade-school Spanish teacher was American-Spanish without Vosotros (Only ever using "ustedes comen")
My high-school Spanish teacher was from Spain, and thus taught us "Vosotros" and its conjugations.
this post was submitted on 24 Mar 2026
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My Spanish is mostly Rioplatense-based so I typically use "ustedes". I do try to memorise the verb conjugations for "vosotros" though, mostly for reading/listening.
Then for the singular I typically use "vos" most of the time, and "usted" in the formal. I don't know exactly the rules; frankly I simply hack it through Portuguese, if I feel like I'd call the person "o/a senhor[a]" I use "usted", otherwise I use "vos". But just like the above I try to memorise the "tú" conjugations.
I didn't in school. The Spanish they taught in my part of the country was to prepare us to work alongside and assimilate with immigrants from south America. So the vosotros conjugations were presented to us but we weren't ever tested on them.
Same for me. I'm currently taking an adult learners Spanish class and the text book has vosotros listed but our teacher told us not to worry about it. I live near the Mexican border so the class focuses on Mexican Spanish.
Same here. It was always shown or mentioned in class alongside the other conjugations, but we were never asked to memorize or use it.
I'm glad I was at least exposed to it, so it's not super surprising when reading.
Native English speaker from the US who took four years of Spanish in school: we learned the vosotros conjugations of verbs in school. However our teachers regularly reminded us that the vosotros form is rarely used outside of Spain, and that because 90% or so of the native Spanish speakers in our area originated from Mexico, we would be very unlikely to hear vosotros used outside the classroom, or see it used in newspapers/literature. I never took the AP Spanish test, but perhaps it included questions on vosotros, therefore our teachers felt it necessary to include?
This was all more than 20 years ago, so the details are a little hazy.
I'm from Europe and have gone to Spain several times but have no relation to it. I started learning Spanish through duolingo which teaches Mexican Spanish with tú/usted/ustedes and just stuck with it. I have a vague understanding of how vosotros works but couldn't use it in a conversation. It's a bit funny at this point because I've also learned the conjugations for vos and the "Chilean" vos but still no vosotros even though I've only ever spoken Spanish in Spain.
I don't think you can count your reference as that of a native speaker from Spain. Vosotros is second person plural and usted/ustedes is the formal/polite way to address someone, using the grammar of third person (singular or plural).
The other uses of vos(otros) and usted(es) are only coming into the picture with latin america. In Castellano, the grammar is clear.
So in reference to your "we use vosotros" - you use both, but for differenr purposes.
So in reference to your "we use vosotros" - you use both, but for differenr purposes.
It depends on the dialect and even the age of the speaker, tho. For me (from central Spain, late thirties) 'usted' sounds really archaic, like using 'thou' in English. I've never used it, no matter how old or 'important' the other person is. My coworker (also from central Spain), in his 50's use it quite often to address customers or the company CEO, and it feels weird to hear it in an accent kinda similar to mine from someone not that older. In the southernmost part of Spain they use it a lot, even young people in informal settings, specially in the plural ('ustedes').
Well - I suppose I am officially archaic then :D I learned 'usted' as the very normal polite form of address in central spain from actual university teachers. In the 90s, admittedly ^^