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Argentinian Spanish

Angela

Angela

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The musicality of it, the cadence, the intonation,makes it sound as if it should be Italian, but I find it among the least understandable versions of Spanish.

 
Rioplatense Spanish is my "dialect". As the map seen in the final part of the video shows, it does not include all of Argentina, but it is spoken in several of the most populated provinces (mainly Buenos Aires, Entre Rios and Santa Fe). In Uruguay, despite being sparsely populated (3,500,000), there are different accents, but almost half of the population lives in the metropolitan area of ​​Montevideo. The intense exchange between the two capitals since colonial times (travel by sea was faster, and it was possible to travel from one city to the other in the same day), explains the similarity of the accents (in the rest of the Latin American countries , and also in Spain, Uruguayans are confused with Argentines).
Among "Rioplatenses", obviously, we detect each other almost immediately...:).
Angela, I'm surprised that you find it so difficult to understand the Ríoplatense accent. Sometimes I hear some Spaniards speak, they speak very quickly, and I wonder... how do foreigners understand them? There are pleasant and easily understandable accents: Mexican, Peruvian, those from central Colombia. But Chilean is really difficult, and also the Caribbean accents (there has been an intense emigration of Cubans and Dominicans to Uruguay in recent years: when the Cubans who work in the small market on my block start to speak quickly, I ask them to speak slowly because I don't understand anything, we say they have "a potato in their mouth"-not a frog :))
 
italouruguayan said:
Rioplatense Spanish is my "dialect". As the map seen in the final part of the video shows, it does not include all of Argentina, but it is spoken in several of the most populated provinces (mainly Buenos Aires, Entre Rios and Santa Fe). In Uruguay, despite being sparsely populated (3,500,000), there are different accents, but almost half of the population lives in the metropolitan area of ​​Montevideo. The intense exchange between the two capitals since colonial times (travel by sea was faster, and it was possible to travel from one city to the other in the same day), explains the similarity of the accents (in the rest of the Latin American countries , and also in Spain, Uruguayans are confused with Argentines).
Among "Rioplatenses", obviously, we detect each other almost immediately...:).
Angela, I'm surprised that you find it so difficult to understand the Ríoplatense accent. Sometimes I hear some Spaniards speak, they speak very quickly, and I wonder... how do foreigners understand them? There are pleasant and easily understandable accents: Mexican, Peruvian, those from central Colombia. But Chilean is really difficult, and also the Caribbean accents (there has been an intense emigration of Cubans and Dominicans to Uruguay in recent years: when the Cubans who work in the small market on my block start to speak quickly, I ask them to speak slowly because I don't understand anything, we say they have "a potato in their mouth"-not a frog :))
Click to expand...

Well, I can get most of it, but I expected it to be the easiest for me to understand and it isn't. I find Mexican Spanish and Castilian less "work". The Castilian may be because that's the "brand" of Spanish I learned in school, but also, to me, Castilian, like Mexican, is clearly enunciated. I do get what you mean about the speed being an issue. It's something non-native Italian speakers tell me all the time: we speak too quickly. :)

I don't find that to be the case with the "Rioplatense" Spanish.

Also, there are quite a few words which while not Spanish don't seem to be Italian, or at least not standard Italian, and so I'm at a loss as to what they mean. I know that as was the case with the U.S., most of the immigration came before standard Italian was taught in the schools, and indeed before a lot of the people were literate. Perhaps the words came from various dialects of Italian, like the dialects of the Veneto, and Napoli and other areas in the south. Or perhaps the words are a combination of dialect expressions from different regions. I barely understood my grandparents' dialect from Parma, so dialects from other areas are beyond me. I love Neapolitan music, for example, but to truly understand the meaning of the lyrics I have to read an Italian translation. The same applies to movies. It's also not just me. When a famous movie about the criminal underworld in Napoli (Camorra) played in Italian theaters, there were subtitles in Italian. :)

I know what you mean about the Caribbean versions of Spanish, but there's a lot of Puerto Ricans in New York, so you sort of pick it up by osmosis, if you know what I mean, once you know basic Spanish. As for Cuban, a Cuban family lived next door to us for 20 years so I sort of got the sound in my head. I don't know if I'd understand them now, however. I learn languages very quickly, but without constant use they just evaporate. That's what has happened to my French. My accent in spoken French used to be impeccable. Now, I wouldn't chance it and just read it to keep my hand in.
 
Due to being extraneous to the Latin world, the Basque influence may be what is making Argentine Spanish difficult to understand.

"Serious indications have also been detected that in the areas of America where there was a significant immigration of the Basque population, influence would have remained at the phonetic level. This would explain the assibilated pronunciation of the vibrant 'r' and 'rr' of Chile and areas of Argentina, Bolivia and Paraguay, given that in Spain this pronunciation is documented precisely in the Basque Country, Navarra and La Rioja."

Translated from https://es.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sustrato_vasco_en_lenguas_romances

"Today, around 10% of the Argentine population are of Basque descent. The destination of the majority of Basque emigrants was Argentina, with Basque culture contributing much to Argentine culture."

Basque Argentines https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basque_Argentines
 
I don't think the difficulty in understanding the Río de la Plata accent comes from the Basque influence. In Uruguay we have a Basque population proportionally similar to that of Argentina. Many people have Basque surnames (from the Spanish and French part) and the Basque beret is part of the clothing of our rural population. However, that does not seem to have had much influence on the linguistic. The Wikipedia text itself says that the influence on the pronunciation of "R" occurs in western regions of Argentina and in Chile, where the accent is very different from "porteño".
Other languages ​​must have had their influence, such as the Portuguese of Brazil. We pronounce words beginning with "ll", more similar to Brazilian Portuguese than Spanish, both in Spain and in the rest of Latin America. For example, the words " lluvia" ( rain) and " llave" ( key), we pronounce them " shuvia" and " shave", similar to the Portuguese " " chuva" and " chave".
 
italouruguayan said:
I don't think the difficulty in understanding the Río de la Plata accent comes from the Basque influence. In Uruguay we have a Basque population proportionally similar to that of Argentina. Many people have Basque surnames (from the Spanish and French part) and the Basque beret is part of the clothing of our rural population. However, that does not seem to have had much influence on the linguistic. The Wikipedia text itself says that the influence on the pronunciation of "R" occurs in western regions of Argentina and in Chile, where the accent is very different from "porteño".
Other languages ​​must have had their influence, such as the Portuguese of Brazil. We pronounce words beginning with "ll", more similar to Brazilian Portuguese than Spanish, both in Spain and in the rest of Latin America. For example, the words " lluvia" ( rain) and " llave" ( key), we pronounce them " shuvia" and " shave", similar to the Portuguese " " chuva" and " chave".
Click to expand...

It's probably partly things like that. I wouldn't get that "shuvia" means "lluvia" unless the context gave it away. To rain in Italian is piovere, the rain is pioggia, and it's raining is piove. The etymology is pluere in Latin, which became plovere, which became piovere.
https://www.howtopronounce.com/italian/piove

The word for key isn't much easier. It's chiave, with the "ch" pronounced like a "k" in English.
https://www.howtopronounce.com/italian/la-chiave
 
Immigration definitely had a lot to do with the characteristics of the Río de la Plata accent. Some time ago I read that a Spanish traveler, who was in Buenos Aires in the 1850s, noted in his diary that he found the Porteño accent "quite similar to the Andalusian accent." Today they are completely different, certainly due to the wave of immigration that began in that decade of the 19th century.
And another important immigration in the Rio de la Plata: the Galician immigration.
I was recently watching a program on the Galician channel on cable TV, and I was surprised to hear some colloquial expressions that we also use.
 
You may be right, Portuguese and Galician have several peculiarities in common as the exchange of the ll (and pl) in sibilante that you speak but I don't think that the influence of Portuguese is as strong in Argentina as in Uruguay. The Portuguese and later the Brazilians exercised their sovereignty on the Uruguayan side of the Río de la Plata, until 1828, albeit with interregnums.
Colonia del Sacramento, wikipedia: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colonia_del_Sacramento

Again, you may be right, but I didn't read expressly in the wikipedia article that the influence of Basque in Argentina only happens in the West.
 
The text in Wikipedia does not expressly name the Argentine provinces that pronounce the "R" in that peculiar way, but in the countries of the Rio de la Plata we know which ones they are referring to. Former Argentine president Carlos Menem spoke like this (he was from La Rioja, an Argentine province on the border with Chile). And a correction: the city of Colonia del Sacramento, founded by the Portuguese in present-day Uruguay, located opposite Buenos Aires in the 17th century, changed sovereignty several times between Portugal and Spain (once, it was exchanged for present-day Equatorial Guinea ), but the rest of the territory was Spanish (the Banda Oriental, the old name of my country). Luso-Brazilian domination only occurred between 1820 (with the final defeat of the oriental hero Jose Artigas by the Portuguese) and 1828, after the withdrawal of Brazilian troops agreed by the Provisional Peace Conference ( United Provinces of Rio de la Plata, Brazilian Empire,United Kingdom).
The exchange of expressions between Brazil and the countries of the Rio de la Plata continues today...in our colloquial language there are several Brazilian expressions entered in the last decades...
 
Another thing: I am only referring to Rioplatense Spanish. Another matter is "portuñol" (or as linguists call it: "Portuguese dialect of Uruguay"), which is spoken mainly in the border city of Rivera, merged with the Brazilian Santana do Livramento , from which it is only separated by a street.
 
This kind of palatalization of ‘l’ occurred also in French (rather : Roman « Gallo ») of Eastern Brittany, where was/is spoken a sort of evolved local Angevin since the Middle Ages and even earlier. It seems it passed like in Italian and Iberian Romance through the stage of a ‘ly’ /λ/ before following changes ;
it can give birth to pronounciations as amazing as in Spanish and Portuguese dialects or langages, if we want not speal of true mess :
rain : pluie < > pyée /pje./ - full : plein < > pyen /pjɛ˜./
corn : blé < > bjë /bjə/ - to blame : blâmer < > bjâmër /bjɑ.’mə/
field : champ (clos) < > klyôs /kλo./, kyôs /kjo./, tyôs /tjo./, chyôs /ʃjo./, syôs /sjo./
(oak) acorn : gland < > glyand /gλɑ˜./, gyand /gjɑ˜./, dyand /ɟɑ˜./, yeond /jɛ˜ɔ˜./, lyaond /λɑ˜ɔ˜./
even worst :
flail : fléau < > fyeù /fjœɥ/, chyeù /ʃjœɥ/, syeù /sjœɥ/, kyeù /kjœɥ/
& : /j/ = [y] half vowel – /λ/ = [ly] both sounds vey close - /ʃ/ = [sh]- /ɟ/ = [dj] -
/˜/ : nasalizes the preceding vowel
 
The popularity of brazilian soap operas has been a phenomenon in Latin America and almost all countries. Perhaps partly from there, this recent brazilian influence, in Uruguay. In 2021 there was a Brazilian soap opera that had already been broadcast to 148 countries.
The most exported brazilian soap operas and the number of countries where each was broadcast: https://gshow.globo.com/podcast/nov...exportadas-e-os-paises-que-mais-compram.ghtml

Although the article about Colonia do Sacramento, that I posted, does not mention this, Colonia do Sacramento was a place of intense smuggling of sugar, tobacco, cotton and other brazilian products to Argentina, and in which the British also participated with their products.
 
It is true. Colonia (and the entire Banda Oriental) was a region of intense smuggling of Portuguese and English products to the Spanish possessions in the South, which was one of the many causes of discontent of the Criollo elites with Spanish domination, since they knew better and cheaper products.
And regarding the recent Brazilian influence, it is not due to soap operas (which we receive translated into neutral Spanish), but to the intense tourist exchange: every year, thousands of Argentine and Uruguayan tourists spend the summer on Brazilian beaches (also vice versa). . This is how expressions like "curtir esa onda" (do things that way), or "bondi" (bus) arrived.
 
"Curtir uma onda" (literally, to tan [not hides or leather, but] a wave), although it has spread in the population and gained several meanings, is a typical expression of Brazilian consumers of cannabis and other head products. Another typical expression of them is "desbundar". Vacations, alcohol, cannabis, and heated conversations all feed off each other.
 
I didn't know that meaning of "curtir uma onda", but it doesn't surprise me...
We also use words like desbundar, or desbunde. And...how could I forget this word that Uruguayans and Argentines use daily! : "Quilombo".
It is a word of African origin, which originally served to name the communities of African slaves who fled from their masters and settled in remote places of Brazil. In the Rio de la Plata, it acquired a different meaning: first, "brothel", and later, it was extended to any problematic or chaotic situation. It is common among us to say: aquello (a situation) era un quilombo! = that situation was chaotic! o No te metas en quilombos! = don't get in trouble!
 
"Curtir", in portuguese, started to mean, to intensely dry something (in fact, originally, until opening cuts [cortes in portuguese] as in cork [cortiça in portuguese]). Cannabis smokers and the like have found it a good way to express their intense experiences (until they crack). From then on, it gained the meaning of having pleasure, dating, and others. "Onda" means vibration, but here it is taken in the sense of mental vibration, fashion, and others. "Bunda" is a word of African origin, it designates buttocks. "Desbunda" means having a deep pleasure like the one you have with the buttocks of Brazilian mulattoes, famous all over the world.
 
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