Conjugation of dar with the pronoun vos

Question

I am Nicaraguan so I have been used to the voseo for a long time now. I know how to conjugate with it, but I have a question about a certain verb, dar. Usually when you conjugate in the present tense using the voseo, you take out the -ar, -er, or -ir endings and add -ás, -és, or -ís. But according to Word Reference,the conjugation of the verb dar using the voseo is vos das. I thought that the only irregulars of the voseo in the present indicative is ser, ir, and haber. But what does the Real Academia say about the conjugation of the verb dar in the present indictative using the voseo? Also, Word Reference says that the conjugation of dar in the present subjunctive is just vos des. But being Nicaraguan, I'm used to the Central American spelling of the voseo in the subjunctive. For example, for the verb dormir, the conjugation would be vos durmás. I'm not sure what the Real Academia says is the Central American spelling in the subjunctive, but shouldn't it be vos dés or is the conjugation in the subjunctive vos des for both the Argentinean and the Central American spelling? Lastly Word Reference says that voseo conjugation in the imperative for dar is da. Shouldn't it be dá since for the voseo in the imperative you usually just take out the r and put the accent on the last vowel, or does the Real Academia say differently for the verb dar?

Here is the Word Reference page for reference: http://www.wordreference.com/conj/ESverbs.aspx?v=dar

Answer 1

The conjugation of dar with vos is in fact regular:

• present indicative: (vos) das
• present subjunctive: (vos) des
• imperative: (vos) da

It's only because the root of dar is nonsyllabic (a mere d-) that you find it curious. Bear in mind that the spelling is in principle meant to reproduce the speech. The accute accent mark that one must use with most verbs when conjugated with voseo in the 2nd person singular is just the way to show the stress that falls on the last syllable; it's not actually part of the conjugation rules. Since all the forms of dar with vos in the present and imperative are monosyllabic, there's no need to add any accent marks.

The verb form dé (present subjunctive, 3rd person singular) does need an accent mark, but this is a diacritic usage, i.e. the written accent is just a way to differentiate the word from a homophone (the preposition de). This is the same thing that happens with té ("tea") vs. te (2nd person singular object pronoun), and with ve (3rd person singular indicative of ver) vs. vé (singular imperative of ir in dialects with tuteo). The forms (vos) das, (vos) des, (vos) da are not homophones of anything else, so they don't need any diacritic accent mark.