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In my experience most places use either "tú" or "vos" for the second person singular intimate/informal pronoun.

But I haven't been to every Spanish speaking country and area. Are there places which use both? And if so how does the usage differ?

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up vote 5 down vote accepted

There is. I grew up in a city in Colombia called Cali. There we have the "Valluno" accent. We widely use vos and tu in almost the same proportion not exclusively as other "Voseo" countries. And it is used rather in the entire Valle del Cauca region.

There are other countries where it is used such as Bolivia and Chile. In the case of Bolivia it is used in Santa Cruz, Beni, Pando and Tarija.

In Ecuador it is sometimes used, but I lived 7 years there and can attest that voseo use is fairly rare.

Here you are for further reading and a nice geographical map with the regions that use it and those that do not. Aswell as those that use both!

Here is the map with the regions where both are used (expressed as light blue and normal blue. Dark blue is where vos is predominant)

You can see according to the map that both are used in central america, Chile, a region in Colombia (Valle del Cauca) and a region of Ecuador (Esmeraldas)

Map of regions of voseo


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I chose the word "regions" rather than "countries" because I realized it was likely that countries might have some regions using one and other regions using the other. But I didn't know if any such smaller regions used both. –  hippietrail Nov 16 '11 at 10:53
Edited accordingly :-) –  Joze Nov 16 '11 at 10:56
In Guatemala I always heard "tú" but later when I was with people who had had a few drinks they would often start using "vos". This made me wonder whether they only used "tú" with us foreigners because they knew we were learning and it's more standard. Or whether "vos" is even more intimate/informal than "tú"? –  hippietrail Nov 16 '11 at 11:02
I heard it a good amount of 'vos' in Cochabamba and occasionally in La Paz too. Although, they may just have been people from Tarija using it. –  Eric Di Bari Nov 16 '11 at 18:21
It should be "Valluno" (and not "Bayuno") since it means "del Valle". –  Gonzalo Medina Nov 20 '11 at 22:12
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