Voseo

[laepelba]

I would like to start a thread about voseo. It refers to an alternate form of the second person singular and is used in certain countries in Latin America to varying extents. I am going to be spending about 6 weeks this summer in the Rio de la Plata region of Argentina and Uruguay where vos is used almost exclusively. I want to get a bit of a jump start on the usage.

Here is an article from Wikipedia about the use of voseo: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voseo

My concerns are about the differing approach to conjugating the verbs that are used with "vos". I spent more hours than I should have trying to chase down the "vos" conjugation for "ir" (because RAE didn't have it listed like it does with most other verbs), only to find out that, for "ir", the tú and vos conjugations are the same: "vas". (Sigh...)

I know that this has come up here and there throughout Tomisimo discussions. I'd like to commit this one particular thread to the topic. Any comments or discussion on the use of the "voseo" in different countries, or the grammatic constructions would be welcome!

Thanks!!