View Full Version : Argentina the closest thing to an Italian speaking country in the Americas 2 million


Villa
02-08-2008, 10:42 PM
Ask any native speaker from any of the 21 Spanish speaking countries and they will tell you that people from Argentina speak Spanish with an Italian accent.
I'm a Spanish and Italian teacher and when I hear people from Argentina speak Spanish it sounds like they are speaking Spanish with an Italian accent.
3/4 of the people from Buenos Aires the capital of Argentina are from Italy or of Italian decent.

Argentina is predominantly a Spanish-speaking country with 34 million speakers—the fourth or 5th largest after Mexico, Spain, and Colombia and
the U.S. Argentines pronounce Spanish, which they call castellano, with a distinctive Italian accent—a legacy inherited from European
immigration(which is the predominant ethnic group in the country, with over 50% of the population being of Italian-Argentines).

Argentines are the only large Spanish-speaking country that universally use what is known as voseo—the use of the
pronoun vos instead of tú (the familiar "you"). The most prevalent dialect is Rioplatense (spoken also in Uruguay).

A phonetic study conducted by the Laboratory for Sensory Investigations of CONICET and the University of Toronto showed that the accent
of the inhabitants is closer to the Neapolitan dialect of Italian than any other spoken language. Italian immigration influenced Lunfardo.


2nd language

Italian
Argentina has more than 2,500,000 Italian speakers; this tongue is the second most spoken language in the nation. Italian immigration from the second
half of the 19th century to the beginning of the 20th century made a lasting and significant impact on the pronunciation and vernacular of the nation's
spoken Spanish, giving it an Italian flare. In fact, Italian has contributed so much to Rioplatense that many foreigners mistake it for Italian.

Cocoliche, a Spanish-Italian creole, was spoken mainly by first and second-generation immigrants from Italy, but
is no longer in daily use; it is sometimes used in comedy. Some Cocoliche terms were adopted into Lunfardo slang.

Lunfardo (general name for Argentinian slag)

Lunfardo is a colorful argot of the Spanish language which developed at the end of the 19th century and beginning of the 20th century in the lower
classes. Much of Lunfardo arrived with European immigrants, such as Italians, Spanish, French, Portuguese, and Poles. It should be noted that most
Italian and Spanish immigrants spoke their regional languages and dialects and not standard Italian or Spanish. Most sources believe that Lunfardo originated
in jails, as a prisoner-only argot. Circa 1900, the word lunfardo itself (originally a deformation of lombardo in several Italian dialects) was used to mean "outlaw".

Lunfardo words are inserted in the normal flow of Rioplatense Spanish sentences. Thus, a Mexican reading
tango lyrics will need, at most, the translation of a discrete set of words, and not a grammar guide.


"Lunfardo" itself comes from the French "lumbard" (-person from Lombardy-)

Examples

Manyar - To know / to eat (from the Italian mangiare -to eat-)
Morfar - To eat (from French argot morfer -to eat-)
Laburar - To work (from Italian lavorare - to work-)
Fiaca - laziness (from the Italian fiacco -weak-)
Fiaca - laziness (from the Italian fiacco -weak-)



There are several dictionaries of lunfardo, that can become handy if you want to learn Argentinian Spanish.