Tú or usted: the one rule
Ask who the person is to you and where you are. Someone you are on first-name terms with — a friend, a relative, a colleague your age, a child, anyone who has said tutéame — is tú. Someone you do not know, someone you serve or are served by, someone older or senior to you, anyone you would address as señor, señora, doctor or profesor — is usted. When you are not sure, usted is the safe opening in most of Latin America and in any formal setting in Spain; being a touch too polite costs nothing, and the other person will tell you to switch if it feels stiff.
The part learners get wrong is not the choice but the agreement. Usted is a you, but it takes the él/ella forms of everything: usted habla, su casa, le doy, siéntese. Tú takes its own: tú hablas, tu casa, te doy, siéntate. A sentence that opens with señor and ends with a tú verb is the most common slip in our learners' chats — perdone, ¿puedes…? — and it reads as half-polite, which is worse than either whole. Pick one register and let every word in the sentence follow it.
Everything that has to agree, in one chart
The last row explains a thing that confuses visitors to Latin America: there, ustedes is the plural of both tú and usted, so a group of friends is ustedes and so is a group of clients, and only the singular keeps the two registers apart. In Spain the informal plural is vosotros (habláis, vuestra casa) and ustedes stays formal.
| tú | usted | |
|---|---|---|
| Subject pronoun | tú (usually left out) | usted (often kept, for clarity and respect) |
| Present-tense ending | -as / -es: hablas, comes, vives | -a / -e: habla, come, vive |
| Possessive | tu, tus | su, sus |
| Object pronoun | te | lo / la (direct), le (indirect) |
| Reflexive | te: te sientas | se: se sienta |
| Affirmative command | habla, come, ven, siéntate | hable, coma, venga, siéntese |
| Negative command | no hables, no vengas | no hable, no venga |
| Plural | vosotros (Spain) · ustedes (Latin America) | ustedes, everywhere |
Who gets usted, who gets tú
Two regional notes. Colombia, Costa Rica and parts of Central America use usted inside the family and between close friends — it marks warmth there, not distance — so a Colombian friend calling you usted is not being cold. And in Argentina, Uruguay, Paraguay and much of Central America the informal you is not tú at all but vos, which has the next chart to itself.
| The person | Spain | Most of Latin America |
|---|---|---|
| A stranger your age in the street | tú is normal | usted first |
| An older stranger | usted | usted |
| A waiter, a shop assistant | tú is common; usted in formal places | usted |
| A customer you are serving | usted, unless they are young and casual | usted |
| A doctor, a teacher, an official | usted | usted |
| Your boss | tú in most companies | usted until invited otherwise |
| Parents and grandparents | tú | tú — except Colombia and parts of Central America, where usted is the affectionate form at home |
| Children and teenagers | tú | tú |
| Online, social media, apps | tú | tú |
The voseo: where tú is vos
Vos is the same register as tú — friends, family, peers — so the choice between informal and usted does not change; only the informal forms do. The stress moves to the last syllable (tenés, querés, hablá), the stem does not change (tenés, not tienes), and the possessive, the object pronoun and the reflexive stay tu, te, te. You will understand vos the first time you hear it; you only need to produce it if you live where it is spoken.
| tú | vos | |
|---|---|---|
| to have | tienes | tenés |
| to want | quieres | querés |
| to be (ser) | eres | sos |
| to be able | puedes | podés |
| to speak | hablas | hablás |
| come! speak! | ven, habla | vení, hablá |
Switching from usted to tú
The older or more senior person offers; the younger accepts. The phrases are fixed: tutéame or puedes tutearme (you can call me tú), nos podemos tutear (we can both switch), or simply trátame de tú. Once you have switched, do not drift back — returning to usted after being invited to tú reads as a step away from the person. If you are the one unsure whether to offer, the safe line is ¿nos tuteamos?, and in a shop, a bank or a clinic the safe line is not to offer at all.
Watch the pairs that belong to one register each: perdona and perdone, disculpa and disculpe, oye and oiga, mira and mire. Each pair is the same word in two registers, and the one you open with commits the rest of the sentence. Perdone, ¿puede decirme…? and perdona, ¿puedes decirme…? are both right; the mixes are not.
Why do English speakers get it wrong?
English had the same split — thou and you — and dropped it four hundred years ago, so an English speaker has one you for the doctor and the dog. The choice itself is learnable in an afternoon; what takes practice is the agreement, because every verb ending, possessive and pronoun in the sentence has to follow the register, and the tú forms are the ones a learner drills first. The quiz on this page is built around that: half of its ten sentences turn on the choice, the other half on a word that has to agree with it.
There is no first-party error rate on this page yet: our mistake tagger counts ser vs estar, por vs para, the tenses and the object pronouns, not register. When it does, the number will sit here, the way it does on the sibling pages. Until then the quiz is the measure.
What comes after tú and usted?
The saber vs conocer quiz is the other choice English makes with one word and Spanish with two. The object pronouns in the chart above — te, le, lo, la — have their own lo, la, le quiz, and the ser vs estar quiz is the first wall every beginner meets. The free Spanish level test places you on the A1–C2 scale in five minutes. Register is an A1-to-A2 habit that keeps paying at every level — A2 vs B1 Spanish says what changes next, and how to go from A2 to B1 is the plan.