How do Latin American Spanish speakers acquire vosotros forms?

Question

In travels throughout Latin America, during which I spoke Spanish learned in Spain, local people had no problem understanding my use of vosotros forms even if they lived in very isolated rural areas and had only a few years of schooling. I know that they were familiar with the exact conjugation of vosotros, because they might even repeat back my statement, e.g. “Ayer Usted preguntó ‘¿cómo hacéis esta comida?’, pues, hacemos así…”.

I suppose that in countries with vos or familiar with vos, they assume vosotros works more or less the same. But how does that explain e.g. isolated rancheros in Baja California, in non-vos Mexico, being familiar with vosotros?

For example, has radio in Latin American (since many communities got TV only recently) presented vosotros forms often enough for any child to grow up learning them? If so, in what context would Latin American radio do that?

Answer 1

Vosotros is used in the Bible, which is a corpus that many people in Latin America are exposed to at least weekly.

This makes it similar to English ye or thou, though in English there are many more updated translations floating around that don’t use those words.

Also, people are exposed to voseo on radio, television and the internet. There are pockets of voseo in every single mainland Spanish-speaking country in Latin America, even Mexico, and Cuba.

(The question mentions the assumption that voseo makes it easy to understand vosotros and its verb forms.)

In fact, people are even occasionally directly exposed to Spanish from Spain, for example in interviews with football players and coaches.

So, church, music, football… All pretty strong forces.