How do “vos” verb endings work in Argentine Spanish?
Cuando llamas a tu mamá por su nombre
A2 Spanish listening practice · Rioplatense Spanish · Picked for people who know a little
In the Río de la Plata, tú is replaced by vos, and its verb endings shift the stress to the final syllable. So “open your mouth” is abrí la boca (not abre), “you tell me” is me decís (not me dices), and there’s no irregular stem-change — vos forms are flat and regular. Once your ear locks onto that end-stress, Argentine speech suddenly parses.
Affirmative vos imperatives simply drop the -r of the infinitive and accent the end: abrir → abrí, mirar → mirá, comer → comé, venir → vení. Present tense follows the same end-stress pattern: vos tenés, vos querés, vos sos. The clip’s punchline — a child correcting “a mí me decís mamá” (you call ME mamá) — is itself pure voseo.
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Harder words in this video
These words are harder than A2. Here is what they mean.
Source: wordfreq 3.1.1 (general) · SUBTLEX-ESP 2011 (spoken). These numbers are close, not perfect.