What are common phrases for switching between formal and informal Spanish

Common phrases for switching between formal and informal Spanish often involve changes in pronouns, verb conjugations, and set expressions. To switch from formal to informal, speakers typically move from using “usted” (formal “you”) to “tú” or “vos” (informal “you” forms, with “vos” being common in some Latin American countries). Verbal forms change accordingly, with formal verb endings like “-a” or “-e” (e.g., “usted habla”) switching to informal endings like “-as” or “-es” (e.g., “tú hablas”).

Polite expressions such as “¿Cómo está usted?” (“How are you?”) can switch to informal as “¿Cómo estás?” or “¿Cómo andás?” (in regions using “vos”). Similarly, to move from informal to formal, use “usted” and the formal verb conjugation, and include polite addresses like “señor/señora” or use polite introductory phrases such as “disculpe” (“excuse me”) instead of informal “perdón”.

In summary, switching involves:

• Pronouns: “usted” ⇄ “tú”/“vos”
• Verb conjugations aligning with chosen pronoun
• Polite/formal phrases vs. casual/informal ones, e.g., “¿Cómo está usted?” vs. “¿Cómo estás?”

This dynamic is context-dependent and varies regionally but follows this core pattern for switching between formal and informal speech in Spanish. ^{2, 9}

References

• Unexpected agreement in Spanish revisited

• Después de usted: Variation and Change in a Spanish Tripartite Politeness System

• The Grammaticalization of the Spanish Construction lo que pasa es que: From Lexical Reference to Subjectification

• ¿Qué twiteastes tú? Variation in second person singular preterit –s in Spanish tweets

• A Fork in the Road: Grammatical Gender Assignment to Nouns in Spanish Dialects

• The refuge of a dying variant within the grammar: Patterns of change and continuity in the Spanish verbal periphrasis haber de + infinitive over the past two centuries

• General Extenders in Spanish Interactions: Frequent Forms, Pragmatic Functions y todo eso

• Dialectal variation in the expression of que in sí-que ‘yes that’ contexts across Spanish: The case of some Latin American Spanish varieties

• How Spanish speakers express norms using generic person markers

• Interface strategies in monolingual and end-state L2 Spanish grammars are not that different

• When agreement is for covert but not for overt: the case of ustedes plus second person plural inflections in peninsular Spanish

• A corpus-based study of aspect: still and already + verb phrase constructions into Spanish

• Paths of Constructionalization in Peninsular Spanish: The Development of “Pues Eso”. A 20th Century Case

• Bailando, me paso el día bailando y los vecinos mientras tanto no paran de molestar. Parar de + inf as an Interruptive Verbal Periphrasis in Spanish

• On the structure and variation of ‘hace’ as a temporal expression

• Competing modal periphrases in Spanish between the 16th and the 18th centuries: A diachronic variationist approach