Argentine languages

Dialectos of the Spanish language spoken in Argentina according to Berta Elena Vidal de Battini.

Argentinian Ernesto Guevara was nicknamed Che due to the frequent use of Argentinean muletilla che.

The Tower of Babel de Libros, a work by Marta Minujín

The languages of Argentina include both the Spanish language (there called Castilian) and the autochthonous languages historically spoken by indigenous peoples, or the allochthonous languages spoken in a stable manner and for generations by communities of migrants and their descendants, who have kept or used them for long historical periods.

Currently, Spanish is the predominant language, understood and spoken as a first or second language by almost the entire population of Argentina, which according to the 2022 census reaches 47.2 million inhabitants. It is the only language for use in public administration at the national level, without any legal norm having declared it official. Of all the countries in the world where Spanish or Castilian has a predominant status, Argentina is the one with the largest territorial extension. The breadth of the country, the existence of different linguistic substrates produced by the variety of Amerindian languages and the different contributions of the vernacular languages of European immigrants at the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century, have given rise to several different dialectal modalities.

Portuguese is spoken by hundreds of thousands of Argentines and Brazilian descendants along the entire border near Brazil. In Misiones it is taught in schools and is used to the east and north of the province due to border trade and the presence of the mass media of that country.^{[citation required ]}

English is the second best-known language in the country, and its teaching is compulsory from primary school in several provinces. Argentina is the only Latin American country rated as a "high proficiency" country in English, ranking 15th globally in 2015, according to a report from the English Proficiency Index (EF EPI). In 2020, Argentina dropped ten places from its best position and was ranked 25th, although it is still the country with the best command of English in Latin America.

Guarani and Quechua have more than a million speakers throughout the Northeast and, especially, in the interior of the province of Corrientes, which in 2004 declared the co-official status of the Guarani language for teaching and government acts, although it is not regulated. Quechua has a striking number of speakers in the province of Santiago del Estero, where a very differentiated dialect called Quichua is spoken, and also in areas of the province of Jujuy where a variety of this language is used that is more similar to the one spoken in southwestern Bolivia. On the periphery of the large urban agglomerations, product of constant migrations from northeastern Argentina, Paraguay, Bolivia and Peru, there are speakers of Guarani, Quechua and Aymara.

The living indigenous languages are Mocoví, Pilagá, Mataco (or Wichí) and Toba (Qom), from the Mataco Guaycurú group, the Guarani that arrived in present-day Argentine territory around the 14th and 15th centuries and was later propagated by missionaries Jesuit Europeans as the vehicular language among various ethnic groups of the Northeast and the Coast and Quechua (together with Aymara) that arrived with the expansion of the Andean states, especially after the Inca conquest in the XV and were used as the vehicular language for catechesis in Cuyo and the Northwest after the Spanish Conquest in the XVI. The province of Chaco established by law 6,604 of 2010 (regulated by Decree 257/2010) the co-official status of the Qom, Wichí and Mocoví languages.

Mapudungun, the language of the Mapuches, is also considered vernacular since there are ethnohistorical testimonies of its presence east of the Andes Mountains since the century XV. Today it has speakers in the provinces of Patagonia, reflecting the long and strong influence of the Mapuches, or Araucanization, on the native Argentines of the Patagonian areas and the Pampean plain.

Another native language is Argentine Sign Language (LSA), a language indicated by deaf communities that clearly emerged from 1885 and influences many other sign languages of neighboring countries.

Diverse communities of immigrants and children of immigrants still maintain the languages of their region of origin, although this use is lost as the generations advance. Among the non-vernacular languages are Italian (including the regional languages of Italy and dialects of Italian), German (including the Volga German dialect and Plautdietsch), Arabic, French, Portuguese, Russian, Afrikaans, Basque, Galician, Catalan, Asturian, Yiddish and Hebrew in Argentine Jewish communities, Welsh in Chubut, Polish, Mandarin Chinese (mainly from the Fujian dialects and from Taiwan), Korean, Japanese (mostly Okinawan speakers),^{[citation needed]} Romanian, Occitan, Lithuanian, Latvian, Estonian, Ukrainian, Belarusian, Croatian, Slovenian, Czech, Slovak, Finnish, Swedish, Danish, Norwegian, Icelandic, Irish, Dutch, Hungarian, Serbian, Bosnian, Albanian, Greek, Macedonian, Bulgarian, Turkish, Armenian and Romani vlax. Many of them are used daily in the community and family environment, in some cases as a mother tongue, and are often used in literary and dramatic works, in the media and sometimes also in school education. In the case of the Welsh colony of Chubut, called Y Wladfa, the population developed its own variety of the language called Patagonian Welsh, which is spoken in the community and taught in bilingual schools, with official support from the provincial government.

Official language

The Argentine Republic has not established any official language by law; However, the Spanish language is the one used (since the foundation of the Argentine State) by the administration of the republic and in which education is taught in all public establishments, to such an extent that at the basic and secondary levels it exists as a subject Spanish is compulsory (subject called "Language" or "Language Practices"). This obligation is an imposition that has resulted in a factor of social cohesion among the millions of inhabitants of Argentina. There is an Argentine Academy of Letters, founded in 1931, which since 1952 regularly collaborates with the Royal Spanish Academy for the registration of local variants.

Although the National Constitution establishes as the responsibility of the National Congress "to recognize the ethnic and cultural pre-existence of the Argentine indigenous peoples", they have not yet had their native languages recognized as official, except in the provinces of Chaco and Corrientes.

The Spanish language in Argentina is presented mainly through the Río de la Plata dialect. There are also other dialects such as the Cuyano dialect and the Cordoba dialect. In the northwest of the country, Spanish is spoken with great influences from Andean Spanish and in the northeast of Argentina, the Spanish of this region has great influences from Paraguayan Spanish.

Dialects

For Francisco Moreno Fernández, all the dialects and variants of Spanish in Argentina are included within a macrodialect that he calls "austral Spanish", which also encompasses the Spanish spoken in Uruguay and Paraguay.^{[citation required]}

The Río de la Plata dialect is the most prestigious dialect throughout the territory and the most recognized as an Argentine variant outside the country; it is strongly influenced by Italian and presents the particularity of being vogue even in the most formal registers of the language.^{[citation required]}

The Patagonian region ―populated mainly by immigrants from the central region of the country― also adopted the use of this variant, with slight phonological variants, probably due to the influence of Chilean immigration in the 20th century.

In the northwest of the country, on the one hand, and in the northeast of Argentina, on the other, the influence of Cacán, Quechua, and Guaraní, respectively, has given rise to somewhat different dialects, which in turn present regional subdialectal variations.. The multiple alveolar trill phoneme /r/ is assimilated by being pronounced as a retroflex fricative [ʐ], similar to Andean Spanish.^{[citation required]}

In the provinces of San Juan, Mendoza and, to a lesser extent, in the provinces of San Luis and La Rioja, there is an intersection between vestiges of Chilean and River Plate Spanish, presenting idioms and a pronunciation similar to Chilean, where "ll" and "y" are pronounced as [ʝ].

Who, due to its former dependency and geographic proximity to Chile, has a limited number of voices that indicate these contacts; Mapuche voices were also incorporated into the flow of Chileanisms. There are areas of Cuyo that denote greater proximity to Chile (Malargüe, Calingasta), others more influenced from the Río de la Plata, either in intonation or in some pronunciations. This influence goes back to the lunfardo from Buenos Aires, who, riding in the cultural flow of the River Plate, established more secure imprints in the Cuyo society, from the upper classes (by students and tango) and which is then perpetrated until today with the media. They are manifestations that make up the chapters of a regional dialectology, but in no way the grammar.

In northwestern Argentina, Andean Spanish merges with the Río de la Plata dialect. The province of Córdoba and especially its provincial capital, has a singular intonation curve, distinctive at first hearing.^{[citation required]}

Other significant features of the Spanish spoken in Argentina, apart from the lexical ones (in which Italianisms, Quechuisms, Guaranisms and Araucanisms abound), are yeísmo with rehilamiento and the use of Guarani words as in the expression che. Yeísmo, pronunciation of the ll and the y as a voiced postalveolar fricative [ʒ], very widespread in cultured speech, with the most notable exception of Northeast Argentina. And, since the 1980s, in the Río de la Plata dialect it is increasingly realized as a voiceless postalveolar fricative [ʃ], especially in informal speech and among young speakers.^{[citation required ]}

In some areas bordering Brazil, the use of portuñol is common, a hybridization of the Spanish of Argentina with the Portuguese of Brazil, given mainly in the province of Misiones and to a lesser extent in Corrientes and Entre Ríos.^{[citation required]}

Some jargons have spread so much that they have deserved special treatment, such as lunfardo and rosarigasino. The first is widely used due to its use in tango lyrics, but it has lost a good part of its influence in common speech, due to the generational change.^{[citation required]}

More or less official languages in Argentina

• Spanish
  • Spanish rioplatense
• Indigenous languages:
  • Mapuche (Since 2013, it is an official language, along with Spanish, in the Chilean commune of Galvarino, where approximately 9100 Mapuche live.)
  • Quechua (Cuzco-Collao Norte de Argentina)
  • Guaraní (The Guaraní is spoken in the provinces of the northeast, bordering Paraguay, like Corrientes, Misiones, Chaco, Formosa, Entre Ríos Also in the Autonomous City of Buenos Aires and the Province of Buenos Aires there is a good number of speakers, where the dialects of the Argentinean Guaraní language are spoken or known by about a million people, including Paraguayan immigrants who speak the Paraguayan Guaraní or the jopará (2005). In the province of Corrientes, where the Argentinean Guaraní dialect is spoken, the co-officiality of the Guaraní language and its compulsory use in teaching and government was decreed in 2004. In addition, the provincial constitution also has its version in the Guaraní language, made in 2007. In 2015, the Judicial Branch of the Argentine province of Formosa announced that it will publish the Provincial Family Violence Act in qom and Guaraní languages.)
  • Toba (Office in Chaco Province. In 2010, the province of Chaco in Argentina designated the Toba as a co-official language with Spanish and the original languages moqoít and wichí.)
  • Mataco or wichí (Official in the Province of Chaco. It is one of the official languages of the province of Chaco in Argentina.)
  • Aimara (Speaked in Jujuy Province)
  • In the process of extinction:
    • Moqoít (Office in Chaco Province)
    • Mocoví (Speaked in Argentina by the Mocoví village, which lives in localities of the center and north of the province of Santa Fe and in the southern area of the province of Chaco.)
    • Pilagá (Speaked in Formosa Province)
    • Chorote iyo'wujwa (almost extinct in Argentina, this language is currently spoken in Boquerón-Paraguay Department)
    • Tapiete (It is spoken by a community of 100 inhabitants of a village near Tartagal, province of Salta. Most speakers also use Paraguayan Guaraní and the Spanish language.)
    • Nivaclé or chulupi (Speaked in Formosa Province)

Classification

The Indo-European languages of Argentina spoken by stable communities belong to five branches: Romance (Spanish and Portuguese), West Germanic (plautdietsch and Standard German), Brythonic Celtic (Welsh) and Central Indo-Aryan (Romani).

The indigenous languages of Argentina on the other hand are more diverse and belong to different linguistic families among them:

(†): extinct

Living languages

In addition to Spanish, the following living languages with their own local development are recorded in Argentina:

Indo-European

• The Lunfar It is a dialectal form born in Buenos Aires, strongly influenced by the languages of immigrants; especially by dialects from the different Italian regions; thus, "lunfardo" derives from the word Lombard, but also the Portuguese, Galician, French, English and Yidis provided numerous lexicon and syntactic elements to the Argentinean language, as well as the typical pronunciation of the Spanish rioplatense. Lunfardo has exerted a strong influence on the informal talk of the whole country, especially through its use in the tango lyrics and in the Portuguese poetry.
• The Welsh, cymraeg, and gymraeg or Welsh, spoken in Chubut: the indo-European language of the British insular Celtic group, the Welsh was the second language of about 25 000 people in 1998 (descendants of Welsh immigrants of the second half of the centuryXIX) in the province of Chubut. A 2008 estimate indicates that the number of speakers could have dropped to only about 5000.
• The plautdietsch or under German, spoken by Mennonite colonies spread mostly in La Pampa, but also in small communities in other provinces.
• The portuñol is spoken in the areas bordering Brazil. It is a pidgin of Spanish and Portuguese.
• The Germanof the ethnic Germans of the Volga River in Russia, spoken especially in the provinces of Santa Fe, Entre Ríos, part of La Pampa and several sectors of the province of Buenos Aires. Likewise, preserved among the descendants of immigrants who came directly from Germany as well as from other German-speaking countries such as Switzerland or Austria.

• See also: Belgranodeutsch, Paraná-Wolga-Deutsch and Swiss German of Argentina.

Sign Language

The Argentine Sign Language, understood by around two million deaf people in Argentina, their instructors, descendants and others. Regional variants are differentiated, such as that of Córdoba.

Quechua languages

The southern Quechua corresponds to the map's quechua II-C.

Southern Quechua: from the Quechua family of languages. It presents 7 variations that are framed in its geographical origin. Here the Sudboliviano and the Santiago Quichua language are detailed:

• The Quechua sudboliviano: spoken by inhabitants of the Bolivian puna residing in Argentina and their descendants. This same variety is spoken in all Jujuy,Salta and Tucumán; after Castilian is the second language of the most widespread country ^{[chuckles]required]}and the most important indigenous language in the Americas^{[chuckles]required]}, already in 1971 had 855 000 speakers who would have to add some 70,000 possible in Salta.
• The Quechua santiagueño: of the Quechua family II C (or Quechua wanp'un southern). Distinct of Bolivian Quechua, with a 81 % Lexical similarity with this. Speaking of 100 000 people, according to Censabella data (1999), although other estimates raise the number to 140 000 or 160 000 speakers in the province of Santiago del Estero (departments of Figueroa, Moreno, Robles, Sarmiento, Brigadier J. F. Ibarra, San Martín, Silipica, Loreto, Atamisqui, Avellaneda, Salavina, Quebraguirchos, There is a chair for study and conservation at the Universidad Nacional de Santiago del Estero. The smallest calculation speaks of a minimum of 60 000 speakers in 2000. His speakers are made up of a Creole population that is currently not authorised as indigenous (although he admits an indigenous past).

Tupi-Guarani languages

Distribution of the Guaraní language in South America.

In the provinces of Corrientes, Misiones, Chaco, Formosa, Entre Ríos, the Autonomous City of Buenos Aires and the Province of Buenos Aires where the Argentine Guarani language dialects are spoken or known by close to one million people, including Paraguayan immigrants who speak Paraguayan Guarani or Jopará (2005). In Corrientes, where the Argentine Guarani dialect is spoken, the co-official status of the Guarani language was decreed in 2004 and its mandatory use in education and government.

• The Chiripa, tsiripá, txiripá, nhandeva, ñandeva, avakatueté or apytare, dialect apapocuva: the language of the Guaraní Tupi family, subgroup I. A few speakers in the province of Misiones and among Paraguayan immigrants.
• The Mbya, mbua, Eastern Argentinean or Mbya: of the Tupi-Ukrainian family, subgroup 1. Lexic similarity of 75% with Paraguayan guaraní. In 2002 he had some 3000 speakers in the province of Misiones.
• The Guaraní western Argentine, Bolivian Eastern Guaraní, chawuncu or Chiriguanodialects chané e izoceño: from the Tupi-Uraní family, subgroup 1. About 15,000 speakers in Salta and Formosa provinces.
• The Guaraní correntino or Guaraní Argentinian: belonging to the Tupi-Uraní family. Speaking (along with Spanish) for up to 70% of the population of origin in the province of Corrientes (around 350 000 people). In 2004, the government decreed the co-officiality of the Guaraní language and its compulsory use in teaching and government, although it has not yet been regulated.
• The Kaiwá, Caingua, Caiwá or kayova, called pai tavyterá in Paraguay: from the Tupi-Uraní family, subgroup 1. Speaked by no more than 510 people in the province of Misiones.
• The tapieté, Cool., guasurangue, tirumbae, yanaigua or ñanagua: from the Tupi-Uraní family, subgroup 1, spoken by about 100 people from a village near Tartagal in Salta.

Mapudungun

The mapudungun, araucano, mapuchedungun, chedungun, mapuche or mapudungu, dialects: pehuenche, nguluche, huilliche, Ranquelche: a language isolate with approximately 40,000 to 100,000 speakers in the provinces of Neuquén, Río Negro, Chubut and Santa Cruz in the year 2000.

Aymara

Central Aymara: language of the Aymara group, spoken by 30,000 inhabitants of Jujuy, north of Salta, as well as immigrants from the Bolivian puna and Peru.

Mataco-Guaicurú languages

Extension of the domain of the Mataco-guaicurú languages.

From the Mataco or Mataguayo group:

• Chorote iyojwa'ja, choroti, Iwaaha or eklenjuy: of the Mataco-guaicurú family, is a language other than the chorote iyo'wujwa. Speaking in 1982 (there are no more recent data) for about 1500 people in the northeast of Formosa province.
• Chorote iyo'wujwa, choroti, manjuy or manjui: from the Mataco-guaicurú family. It has about 800 speakers in 1982, 50% of them monolingual, mixed with speakers of the chorote iyojwa'ja. It is currently spoken by just 400 people.
• Nivaclé, ashlushlay, chulupi, churupi, chulupie, Chulupedialects nivaclé of the jungle and Nivaclé river: of the Mataco-guaicurú family, it has about 200 speakers in the northeast of the province of Formosa. The term "chulupi" and similar are pejorative and as the word "guaycurú" (which in Guaraní means something like "bárbaros") comes from the Guaraní invaders.
• Mataco or Ihamtés: dialects:
  • Wichí lhamtés güisnay, Kill güisnay, güisnay, Kill pilcomayoor Kill: of the Mataco-guaicurú family, spoken by some 15,000 people in the area of the river Pilcomayo, province of Formosa. The term "mataco" to designate the languages and the wichí peoples is pejorative and comes from the runa simi-speaking invaders (Quechua speakers).
  • Wichí lhamtés nocten, Mataco nocten, nocten, noctenes u Okaytenai: from the Mataco-guaicurú family, spoken by about 100 people on the northeastern border of the country, to the area of Clorinda.
  • Wichí lhamtés vejoz, Kill vejoz or Eyes, dialect Old Berry: from the Mataco-guaicurú family. It has some 25 000 speakers distributed in the provinces of Chaco and Formosa. Its area of influence, in general, is located west of the Toba, along the upper course of the Bermejo River and in the Pilcomayo River. It is not intelligible with other Chaco languages, and it is also spoken to in Bolivia.

From the Guaicuru group:

• Mocoví, Mocobí or mbocobí: from the Mataco-guaicurú family. In 2000, there were some 4530 speakers in Formosa, the south of Chaco and the northeast of the province of Santa Fe. By 2008, the figure had gone dangerously to 3000 or 5000 people.
• Pilagá or battery: of the Mataco-guaicurú family, dialects toba-pilagá (West Toba or Black hat) and chaco pilagá (South Toba): from the Mataco-guaicurú family, spoken by about 2000 to 5000 people in the basins of the rivers Pilcomayo and Bermejo, provinces of Formosa and Chaco. In 2004 it was spoken by 4000 people.
• Qom, South chaco, qom, Toba qom or southdialects Southeast Toba and North Toba: from the Mataco-guaicurú group. Speaked in 2006 by 40 000 to 60 000 people of the kom'lik ethnic group in the east of the provinces of Formosa and Chaco. Different from toba-pilagá and toba maskoy spoken in Paraguay. In 2000 it was spoken by 21 410 indigenous (19800 in Argentina).

Endangered

• Chana, language of the family charrúa or charruana, whose languages disappeared towards the beginning of the centuryXIX to the west of the Uruguay River, happening the same thing toward 1830 east of the same river. However, in mid-2005, a resident of the midtown of Nogoyá made known that he retained the Chaná language by oral transmission, and mentioned more than 250 words and phrases, among them all the words charrúas and chanás known.

Extinct languages

Approximate distribution of languages in the southern end of South America in times of the Conquest.

In addition to the surviving indigenous languages, before contact with Europeans and for some time during the conquest of America, the following languages were also spoken in Argentina, which are now extinct:

• Abipón: of the Mataco-guaicurú family, spoken by the Abbey, and related to the kadiweu, do not appear to be alive speakers of this language.
• Cacán, Calchaquí, Came or diaguita: language spoken by the Pazioca (“diaguitas”). Language not classified due to lack of information.
• Chané: of the Arawakana family, without subgroup classification.^{[chuckles]required]} It has been compared to the guana or kashika of Paraguay, or to the Brazilian Terena, but both are different. It was spoken in the province of Salta, about 300 years ago. The ethnic group is called izoceño, and now speaks western Guaraní.
• Kunza, brother, Likanantai, lipe, ulipeor Atacameño language of the Atacama ethnic group (lickan-amtay), also extinct in Chile. In the absence of further information, it is considered an isolated language.
• Henia-camiare or hênia-kamiare: spoken by the ethnicity of the same name best known as comechingones. There are not enough elements to establish their belonging to any family.
• Querandí: tongue of the ancient pampas also known as Querandíes. Their existence as the only language is speculative. The few known words have been tried to relate to the punch and chon languages.
• Allentiac and millioncayac, tongues belonging to the Huarpe family (name also given to the first), spoken another in the region of Cuyo. The scarcity of remaining elements prevents attempting a higher ranking.
• Lule-toconoté: considered of the lule-villa family, some authors claim that # and toconoté would not be the same language, spoken by peoples who lived in part of the territory of the present province of Santiago del Estero, and partly migrated towards the Chaco in the mid-centuryXVII.
• Ona, aona, selknam or shelknam: from the chon family, extinct in the 1990s or in the 2000s.
• Puelche, north tehuelche, gennaken or pampa: Insulated language, possibly with a remote kinship with chon languages. Rodolfo Casamiquela worked with her last speakers in the middle of the centuryXX..
• Yagán, Yamana or hausi-kúta (also) yaghan, Yagán, yagana): A language spoken by Aboriginals from the southern coastal areas of the Yugoslav archipelago. It was extinguished in Argentina at the beginning of the centuryXX., although a great dictionary developed by Thomas Bridges and some important words are preserved in toponymy such as Ushuaia, Lapataia, Tolhuin, etc. His last native speaker in Chile was Cristina Calderón.
• The Guaraní missionary was spoken in the area and time of influence of the Jesuit missions, between 1632 and 1767, definitively disappearing around 1870, but having left important written documents.
• TehuelcheSouthern or aonek'o 'a'jen: from the chon family. In the 1966 census, only two hundred speakers were registered in Santa Cruz.
• Vilela: belonging to the family lule-vilela, and extinct in 2011. About twenty people talked about it in the city of Resistance, province of Chaco.