Costa Rican Spanish is the form of the Spanish language spoken in Costa Rica. It is one of the dialects of Central American Spanish. Phonetics The distinguishing characteristics of Costa Rican phonetics include the following: Assibilation of the "double-R" phoneme in some speakers (spelled word-initially and intervocalically), especially in rural areas, resulting in a voiced alveolar sibilant ()—thus ("clothing"), carro ("car"). Assibilation also affects the sequence , giving it a sound that is similar to . The double-R phoneme and the single-R phoneme after a t, can also be realized as voiced alveolar approximant [ɹ] by the majority of speakers, with a sound similar to the of American English. Thus ropa ("clothing"), carro ("car") and cuatro ("four"). Except before a consonant (this does not apply to all speakers) in which case is pronounced as a voiced alveolar trill [r] . Thus puerta ("door"), guardar ("to save"). Note: This does not apply to the single-R phoneme which is pronounced as an alveolar tap [ɾ] like the rest of Spanish speakers. Velarization of word-final (before a pause or a vowel), i.e. pronunciation as the velar nasal . can be lost in contact with the front vowels and . The Costa Rican dialect adopted the voiceless alveolar affricate and the cluster (originally ) represented by the respective digraphs and in loanwords of Nahuatl origin, for example quetzal and tlapalería ('hardware store'). Even words of Greek and Latin origin with , such as and , are pronounced with : , (compare , in Spain and other dialects in Hispanic America). Syllable-final is only infrequently aspirated, or pronounced as an , among middle-class speakers in central Costa Rica. It may be aspirated most often at the end of a word and before another word which begins in a vowel, but still occurs most of the time. Costa Rica's border regions with Nicaragua and Panama show higher rates of -reduction. The phoneme represented by , , is typically just a weak aspiration, like . In words like 'work' it can barely be heard. Second person singular pronouns Usted Usted is the predominant second person singular pronoun in Costa Rican Spanish. Young men have been leading a trend in addressing close friends and peers with , which is not typical of other Spanish dialects. Some speakers use only usted in addressing others, never vos or . Others use both usted and vos, according to the situation. Vos