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1 Only in countries with voseo; Ladino has vos as the formal form, instead of usted. 2 Primarily in Spain; elsewhere, ustedes is used in the plural regardless of the level of formality. 3 Reflexive. Usted may be abbreviated as Ud. or Vd. A disused equivalent of vuestro(s) / vuestra(s) is voso(s) / vosa(s). [1]
When que is used as the object of a preposition, the definite article is added to it, and the resulting form (el que) inflects for number and gender, resulting in the forms el que, la que, los que, las que and the neuter lo que. Unlike in English, the preposition must go right before the relative pronoun "which" or "whom":
The use of usted and ustedes as a polite form of address is universal. However, there are variations in informal address. Ustedes replaces vosotros in part of Andalusia, the Canary Islands, and Latin America, except in the liturgical or poetic of styles. In some parts of Andalusia, the pronoun ustedes is used with the standard vosotros endings.
This means that speaking to a group of friends a Spaniard will use vosotros, while a Latin American Spanish speaker will use ustedes. Although ustedes is semantically a second-person form, it is treated grammatically as a third-person plural form because it originates from the term vuestras mercedes ('your [pl.] mercies,' sing. vuestra merced).
Similarly, the participle agrees with the subject when it is used with ser to form the "true" passive voice (e.g. La carta fue escrita ayer 'The letter was written [got written] yesterday.'), and also when it is used with estar to form a "passive of result", or stative passive (as in La carta ya está escrita 'The letter is already written.').
In the Río de la Plata region, both the tú-conjugation and the voseo conjugation are found, the tú-form being more common. In this variety, some studies have shown a pragmatic difference between the tú-form and the vos-form, such that the vos form carries information about the speaker's belief state, and can be stigmatized.
The infinitive is generally the form found in dictionaries. It corresponds to the English "base-form" or "dictionary form" and is usually indicated in English by "to _____" ("to sing," "to write," etc.). The ending of the infinitive is the basis of the names given in English to the three classes of Spanish verbs:
Together with ver (to see) and prever (to foresee), they are the only four verbs with irregular imperfect indicative. Their tú imperative forms are sé, ve (for both ir and ver, although mirar is more common than ver in commands), and prevé. Their vos imperative forms are sé, andá (the verb andar replaces ir), ve and prevé.