Bitesize Spanish 3 - different forms of 'you'

In Spanish (and French - along with many other languages) there are different forms of the word 'you' depending on who and how many people you are talking to.

Firstly there are both singular and plural forms of the word which in English is distinguished - it would sometimes help if it was in certain situations!  Spanish also has formal and informal forms of the word (informal is sometimes called familiar) - which is used depends on who you are talking to and/or the circumstances - the difference doesn't come across when translating into English but in Spanish if you used the informal where the formal is required you could run the risk of sounding rather arrogant or even a little presumptuous!

I will start with a small table showing what is needed where:

Singular	tú
Singular formal	usted
Plural informal	vosotros
Plural formal	ustedes

The following are some examples of where these pronouns would be used:

Kevin, ¿quieres tú comer?  -  Kevin, do you want to eat?
Senor Bedward, ¿quiere usted comer? - Mr Bedward, do you want to eat?
Fran y Shawn, ¿queréis vosotros comer?- Fran and Shawn, do you want to eat?
Señora McCarthy y Señor Gultnieks, ¿queréis vosotros comer? - Mrs McCarthy and Mr Gultnieks, do you want to eat?


Quite often in actual speaking the pronouns would be omitted because the context would make clear who the subject of each sentence is...

One of the reasons for needing to know which form of "you" to use is that there are corresponding words for "your" and "yours" as well as for "you" when it isn't the subject of the sentence.  Spanish uses different verb forms for informal and formal verb usages, the informal takes a second-person conjugation and the formal takes a third-person conjugation (which is the same as for the equivalents of "he", "she" and "they".

When to use which form
Think of English and if you are in a situation where in English you would call a person by their first name then generally the informal would be appropriate.  The informal is used when speaking with family members, pets and close acquaintances, usted is generally used when speaking with anyone else.  If uncertain the best thing to do is to use usted until the other person uses tú and then it is usually okay to reciprocate (the exceptions to this are - if you're a child or the person speaking to you is a police officer or other authority figure).