Language and Dialect in Argentina

Spanish Language in Argentina

Given its location in South America, it shouldn’t come as a surprise that the primary, and official, language in Argentina is Spanish.

However, like any country or community, they have special dialects of Spanish that might affect your ability to communicate even if you speak the language.

You’ll find a lot of words borrowed from other European and African languages to be quite common here, as a result of various waves of immigrants whose languages influenced the community.

Ríoplatense

Argentinians speak a unique subdialect of Spanish called Ríoplatense or River Plate Spanish. You’ll mainly encounter it in the southern half of Argentina, and it’s also common in Uruguay.

Like other Latin American countries, Argentinian Spanish speakers will use usted or ustedes in place of vosotros or vosotras. However, they also say vos in place of tú, setting their particular subdialect apart from the rest of Latin American Spanish. This will have a noticeable effect on the grammar surrounding verb forms, so be aware of that.

There are also some pronunciation differences. For example, the ll common in Spanish words is pronounced like sh rather than y.

For more information on the dialect, as well as a list of the borrowed words I mentioned above, Spanishdict.com has a great explanation: https://www.spanishdict.com/guide/river-plate-spanish!

English Language in Argentina

Here’s the language you’re probably here for. How useful is English for getting around in Argentina?

Well, that depends heavily on where you go. English is the 2nd most spoken language in Argentina, but not everyone who speaks it is fluent. So some estimates actually place Italian higher with regards to fluency.

It currently has 2.8 million speakers or so within the country, but this is still a pretty small proportion of the country’s total population.

Like any other place you’re visiting, you’re most likely to encounter English speakers in big cities and in popular tourist areas. The further you get from this, the harder time you’ll likely have in finding someone who speaks English.

Still, many Argentinians will speak at least some English. They just might not speak it well, and it could be tough to communicate. Learning some Spanish will certainly make your experience easier.

So, if you plan to travel outside of Buenos Aires or tourist-heavy areas, I wouldn’t recommend relying on English.

Italian

Depending on the source, and the last time they got their data, Italian is either the second or third most-spoken language in Argentina, in competition with English. It has around 1.5 million speakers as of the last counts.

This comes as a result of a large influx of Italian immigrants that made their way to the country from the mid 1800s until around 1920, which was the height of their immigration.

Italian has had a significant influence on Argentinian Spanish, and many of the borrowed words I mentioned above come from Italian. A lot of people say that Argentinian Spanish sounds like Italian when they hear it!

Indigenous Language in Argentina

There are around 15 indigenous languages in Argentina, and they are not commonly spoken at all. In fact, many of them are only spoken by older generations, and are thus endangered.

In total, though, these languages make up a population of about 1.2 million speakers!

Of those indigenous languages, Quechua, Guaraní, and Mapudungun are the most widely spoken.

Quechua

Quechua, across Argentina, Bolivia, and Peru, has over 2 million speakers! It’s the native language of the Inca, and their influence in the region caused it to spread to a lot of other indigenous groups in western South America.

Within Argentina itself, Quechua is only spoken by around 60,000 people, but that number is a bit uncertain because of the large number of Quechua speakers in Bolivia. Many Bolivian immigrants also speak it.

Guaraní

Guaraní is spoken by about 200,000 people, but is more common in Paraguay. Like Quechua, it’s mainly spoken in northern Argentina. In fact, it’s taught in schools in the Corrientes region of Argentina, and is co-official with Spanish there!

Mapudungun

Spoken by the Mapuche people of southern Argentina and Chile, this one has somewhere between 100,000-150,000 speakers in Argentina.

It’s probably pretty clear how much these three languages make up the population of indigenous language speakers. The others have staggeringly small numbers, like Chorote, which has less than 1500 speakers!

Arabic

Arabic, specifically Levantine Arabic, has about 1 million speakers in Argentina, from a wave of immigration that occurred around the same time as the one that brought Italian (19th-20th century).

The majority of these immigrants came in the 1860s from Lebanon and Syria.