Languages of Argentina | |
---|---|
Official | de facto Spanish |
Indigenous | Tupi-Guarani languages, Mataco–Guaicuru languages, Mapuche, Chaná, Quechua [1] |
Vernacular | Rioplatense Spanish, Lunfardo, Portuñol |
Minority | Italian, English, German, Plautdietsch, Chinese, Welsh |
Foreign | English |
Signed | Argentine Sign Language |
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Spanish is the language that is predominantly understood and spoken as a first or second language by nearly all of the population of Argentina. According to the latest estimations, the population is currently greater than 45 million. [2]
English is another important language in Argentina and is obligatory in primary school instruction in various provinces. Argentina is the only Latin American country characterized as "high aptitude" in English, being placed 15th globally in the year 2015, according to a report from the English Aptitude Index. [3] [4] In 2017, Argentina fell ten places from its best position and fell to 25th place, though it continues to be the second highest ranked Ibero-American, after Portugal. [5]
Guarani and Quechua are other important languages in Argentina with 200,000 speakers and 65,000 speakers respectively. [6]
Fifteen Indigenous American languages [6] currently exist and five others (today extinct) existed in different regions. The vernacular Indigenous American languages (native to the Argentine territory) are spoken by very few people. In addition there is Lunfardo, a slang or a type of pidgin with original words from many languages, among these languages are ones from the Italian Peninsula, such as Piedmontese, Ligurian, and others like Italian, Portuguese, etc., and have been seen in the Río de la Plata area since at least 1880. There is also Portuñol, a pidgin of Portuguese and Spanish spoken since approximately 1960 in the areas of Argentina that border Brazil.
Another native language is Argentine Sign Language (LSA), which is signed by deaf communities. It emerged in 1885.
After the above-mentioned languages German follows (around 200,000, including a significant number of the Volga German dialect and of the Plautdietsch language). Multitude of Eurasian and immigrant languages are spoken in their respective ethnic communities throughout the country; these are namely Albanian, Arabic, Armenian, Asturian, Basque, Belarusian, Bosnian, Bulgarian, Catalan, Chinese, Croatian, Czech, Danish, Dutch, Estonian, Finnish, French, Galician, Greek, Hebrew, Hungarian, Irish, Japanese, Korean, Latvian, Lithuanian, Macedonian, Norwegian, Occitan, Polish, Portuguese, Romani, Romanian, Russian, Serbian, Slovene, Swedish, Turkish, Ukrainian, Welsh, and Yiddish. Most of these languages have, with the exception of Chinese and Plautdietsch, very few speakers and are usually only spoken in family environments.
The Republic of Argentina has not established, legally, an official language; however, Spanish has been utilized since the founding of the Argentine state by the administration of the Republic and is used in education in all public establishments, so much so that in basic and secondary levels there is a mandatory subject of Spanish (a subject called "language"). Since 1952, The Argentine Academy of Letters, which was founded in 1931, has regularly collaborated with The Royal Spanish Academy to register local variants.
Even though the Constitution establishes the jurisdiction of the National Congress "to recognize the ethnic and cultural pre-existence of indigenous peoples of Argentina", the native languages have not been recognized as official, except in the provinces of Chaco and Corrientes. [lower-alpha 1]
The most prevalent dialect in Argentina is Rioplatense , whose speakers are located primarily in the basin of the Río de la Plata. There is also Cuyo Spanish and Cordobés Spanish. In the north, Andean Spanish is spoken and in the northeast there is a great influence from Paraguayan Spanish. [7]
Argentina is one of several Spanish-speaking countries (along with Uruguay, Paraguay, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Honduras, and Costa Rica) that almost universally use what is known as voseo —the use of the pronoun vos instead of tú (the familiar "you") as well as its corresponding verb forms.
A phonetic study conducted by the Laboratory for Sensory Investigations of [CONICET] and the University of Toronto [8] showed that the intonation Porteño Spanish is unlike that of other Spanish varieties, and suggested that it may be a result of convergence with Italian. Italian immigration influenced Lunfardo , the slang spoken in the Río de la Plata region, permeating the vernacular vocabulary of other regions as well.
As in other large countries, the accents vary depending on geographical location. Extreme differences in pronunciation can be heard within Argentina. One notable pronunciation difference found in Argentina is the "sh" sounding y and ll. In most Spanish speaking countries the letters y and ll are pronounced somewhat like the "y" in yo-yo, however in most parts of Argentina they are pronounced like "sh" in English (such as "shoe") or like "zh" (such as the sound the ⟨s⟩ makes in "measure").
In many of the central and north-eastern areas of the country, the trilled /r/ takes on the same sound as the ⟨ll⟩ and ⟨y⟩ ('zh' – a voiced palatal fricative sound, similar to the "s" in the English pronunciation of the word "vision"). For Example, "Río Segundo" sounds like "Zhio Segundo" and "Corrientes" sounds like "Cozhientes".
The ISO639 code for Argentine Spanish is "es-AR".
The Indo-European languages spoken in Argentina by stable communities fall into five branches: Romance (Spanish, Italian, and Portuguese), West Germanic (English, Plautdietsch and standard German), Celtic languages (Welsh), and Central Indo-Aryan (Romani).
On the other hand, the indigenous languages of Argentina are very diverse and fall into different linguistic families...
Classification of the Indigenous Languages of Argentina | ||||
Family | Groups | Language | Territory | |
Aymaran languages They are a family of two languages of the Central Andes that have been in contact for a long time with the Quechuan Languages and they have influenced each other greatly. In the last decades, more Aymaran speakers have migrated from neighboring countries. | ||||
Aymara | Jujuy | |||
Arawakan languages One of the largest families of languages in South America, it extends through a large part of the subcontinent. The Chané people do not speak Chané anymore, but rather Guarani or Spanish. | Paraná-Mamoré | Chané (†) | Chaco | |
Charruan languages Poorly documented languages that are difficult to classify. They were believed to be extinct over a century ago, but in 2005 the last semi-speaker of Chaná was found | ||||
Chaná | Pampas | |||
Charrúa (†) | Pampas | |||
Chonan languages Family of languages from Patagonia and Tierra de Fuego. Of the four Chonan languages that are known with certainty, there are only less than ten speakers of Tehuelche left. It is possible that these languages are distantly related to Puelche or Gününa Yajüch and with Querandí. | Continental | Teushen (†) | Patagonia | |
Tehuelche (†) | Patagonia | |||
Insular | Haush (†) | Tierra del Fuego | ||
Ona (†) | Tierra del Fuego | |||
Huarpean languages A small family of languages or two dialects of an isolated language that became extinct in the mid-18th century. | ||||
Allentiac (†) | North of Cuyo | |||
Millcayac (†) | South of Cuyo | |||
Lule-Vilela languages Vilela is in imminent danger of extinction and Lule became extinct in the 18th century. The relation between the two languages is not unanimously accepted and those that deny the relation attribute the similarities to the contact between the two. | ||||
Lule (†) | Gran Chaco | |||
Vilela (†) | Gran Chaco and Santiago del Estero | |||
Mataco-Guaicuru languages There are two groups of languages from Gran Chaco that are spoken in Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, and Paraguay. It is the most represented family of languages in Argentina. | Mataco/Mataguayo | Chorote | Formosa | |
Maká | Formosa | |||
Nivaclé | Formosa | |||
Wichí | Gran Chaco, Formosa and Salta | |||
Guaicuru | Abipón (†) | Gran Chaco | ||
Mocoví | Gran Chaco and Santa Fe | |||
Pilagá | Gran Chaco and Formosa | |||
Toba or Qom | Gran Chaco and Formosa | |||
Quechuan languages These languages, of the Central Andes, have had prolonged contact with the Aymaran languages and, therefore, have influenced each other. They were introduced to the current Argentine territory during the expansion of the Incan Empire and the evangelization of Catholic missionaries. The recent migration from neighboring countries has increased the number of Southern Quechuan speakers. | Quechua II | Santiagueño Quechua | Santiago del Estero | |
Southern Quechua | Jujuy, Salta y Tucumán | |||
Tupian languages The Tupian languages are primarily spoken in the Amazon Basin, but also in Chaco and neighboring areas. Within the Argentine territory, they speak languages from the Guarani groups, some of which come from recent migration from neighboring countries. | Tupi-Guarani languages | Ava Guarani | Misiones | |
Correntino Guarani | Corrientes | |||
Misiones Guarani (†) | Gran Chaco | |||
Eastern Bolivian Guarani | Formosa and Salta | |||
Kaiwá | Misiones | |||
Mbyá | Misiones | |||
Tapiete | Salta | |||
Isolated languages Many have tried to group these languages into more appropriate families but the results have been inconclusive. For example, people have tried to group Mapuche with the Mayan languages and the Penutian languages of South America, and with the Arawakan languages, Uru-Chipaya languages and various other language families of South America. | ||||
Kunza (†) | Northwest | |||
Mapuche | Patagonia | |||
Puelche (†) | Patagonia | |||
Yaghan (†) | Tierra del Fuego | |||
Unclassified languages Additionally there exists a combination of languages with rare documentation and references to languages of extinct villages, that cannot be classified because of a lack of information. | ||||
Cacán (†) | Northwest | |||
Comechingon (†) | Sierras Pampeanas | |||
Old Mapuche (†) | Patagonia | |||
Querandí (†) | Pampas | |||
Sanavirón (†) | Northwest and Sierras Pampeanas |
(†): extinct language
In addition to Spanish, the following living languages are registered in Argentina with local growth:
Argentine Sign Language, understood by around two million deaf people of Argentina, their instructors, descendants, and others. There are different regional variants, such as in Cordoba.
Southern Quechua: from the family of Quechuan languages. There are seven variations present that are marked by their geographical origin, detailed here are South Bolivian Quechua and Santiagueño Quechua:
In the provinces of Corrientes, Misiones, Chaco, Formosa, Entre Ríos, [18] [19] and Buenos Aires dialects of Argentine Guarani are spoken or known by nearly one million people, including Paraguayan immigrants that speak Paraguayan Guarani or Jopara. [15] In Corrientes, the Argentine Guarani dialect was decreed co-official in 2004 and made obligatory in educational instruction and the government.
The Mapuche language is an isolated language that had approximately 8,400 speakers in the provinces of Neuquén, Río Negro, Chubut, and Santa Cruz in 2004, with an ethnic population of 110,000 people. [21]
Central Aymara is a language of the Aymaran group, spoken by 4,100 inhabitants of Jujuy, of the North of Salta, besides the immigrants of Puna and of Peru. [22]
From the Mataco or Mataguyao group:
From the Guaicuru group:
In addition to surviving indigenous languages, before the contact with Europeans and during some time during the Colonization of the Americas in Argentina they spoke the following languages, that are currently extinct:
Chaco, officially the Province of Chaco, is one of the 23 provinces in Argentina. Its capital and largest city, is Resistencia. It is located in the north-east of the country.
The Gran Chaco or Dry Chaco is a sparsely populated, hot and semiarid lowland tropical dry broadleaf forest natural region of the Río de la Plata basin, divided among eastern Bolivia, western Paraguay, northern Argentina, and a portion of the Brazilian states of Mato Grosso and Mato Grosso do Sul, where it is connected with the Pantanal region. This land is sometimes called the Chaco Plain.
The indigenous Gran Chaco people consist of approximately thirty-five tribal groups in the Gran Chaco of South America. Because, like the Great Plains of North America, the terrain lent itself to a nomadic lifestyle, there is little to no archaeological evidence of their prehistoric occupation. Contributing to this near-absence of archaeological data is the lack of suitable raw material for stone tools or permanent construction and soil conditions that are not conducive to the preservation of organic material.
The Wichí are an indigenous people of South America. They are a large group of tribes ranging about the headwaters of the Bermejo River and the Pilcomayo River, in Argentina and Bolivia.
Guaycuru or Guaykuru is a generic term for several ethnic groups indigenous to the Gran Chaco region of South America, speaking related Guaicuruan languages. In the 16th century, the time of first contact with Spanish explorers and colonists, the Guaycuru people lived in the present-day countries of Argentina, Paraguay, Bolivia, and Brazil.
Matacoan is a language family of northern Argentina, western Paraguay, and southeastern Bolivia.
Guaicuruan is a language family spoken in northern Argentina, western Paraguay, and Brazil. The speakers of the languages are often collectively called the Guaycuru peoples. For the most part, the Guaycuruans lived in the Gran Chaco and were nomadic and warlike, until finally subdued by the various countries of the region in the 19th century.
Mataguayo–Guaicuru, Mataco–Guaicuru or Macro-Waikurúan is a proposed language family consisting of the Mataguayan and Guaicuruan languages. Pedro Viegas Barros claims to have demonstrated it. These languages are spoken in Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay, and Bolivia.
Toba Qom is a Guaicuruan language spoken in South America by the Toba people. The language is known by a variety of names including Toba, Qom or Kom, Chaco Sur, and Toba Sur. In Argentina, it is most widely dispersed in the eastern regions of the provinces of Formosa and Chaco, where the majority of the approximately 19,810 speakers reside. The language is distinct from Toba-Pilagá and Paraguayan Toba-Maskoy. There are also 146 Toba speakers in Bolivia where it is known as Qom and in Paraguay where it is also known as Qob or Toba-Qom.
The Mocoví language is a Guaicuruan language of Argentina spoken by about 3,000 people, mostly in Santa Fe, Chaco, and Formosa provinces.
Iyoʼwujwa Chorote is a Matacoan language spoken by about 2,000 people, mostly in Argentina where it is spoken by about 1,500 people; 50% of whom are monolingual.
Wichí Lhamtés Güisnay or Wiznay is a Wichí language. Wichí Lhamtés Güisnay had an estimated 15,000 speakers in 1999 in Argentina. The language is centered in the Pilcomayo River region. Other names for the language include Güisnay, Mataco, Mataco Güisnay, Mataco Pilcomayo, and Wichí Lhamtés. A grammar book has been written for the language.
Wichí Lhamtés Nocten, or Weenhayek, is a Wichí language primarily spoken in Bolivia, where an estimated 1,810 Wichí people spoke it in 1994. An additional one hundred people spoke the language in Argentina in 1994. In Bolivia, the language is spoken in the north-central Tarija Department, southwest of Pilcomayo River, and in Cordillera de Pirapo. In Argentina, it is spoken in from the northern border south to Tartagal, Salta. The language is also called Mataco, Bolivian, Mataco Nocten, Nocten, Noctenes, Oktenai, and Weenhayek; the last name is used in the Bolivian constitution of 2009.
Wichí Lhamtés Vejoz is a Mataco-Guaicuru language of Argentina and Bolivia. Speakers are concentrated in northern parts of Chaco, Formosa, Salta, Jujuy Provinces, as well as west of Toba, the upper Bermejo River valley, and Pilcomayo River. The language is also called Mataco Vejoz and Vejos.
The languages of South America can be divided into three broad groups:
Enxet, also known as Enxet Sur or SouthernLengua, is a language spoken by the Indigenous southern Enxet people of Presidente Hayes Department, Paraguay. It is one of twenty languages spoken by the wider Gran Chaco Amerindians of South America. Once considered a dialect of a broader language, known as Vowak or Powok, Enxet and Enlhet diverged as extensive differences between the two were realized.
The Wichí languages are an indigenous language family spoken by the Wichí in northwestern Argentina and far-southeastern Bolivia, part of the Matacoan family. They are also known as Mataco, Wichi, Wichí Lhamtés, Weenhayek, Noctenes, Matahuayo, Matako, Weʃwo. The name Mataco is common but pejorative.
The Chaco linguistic area is a linguistic area that includes various South American language families and isolates of the Chaco region of South America, in southern Brazil, southeastern Bolivia, Paraguay, Uruguay, and Argentina.