ARGENTINA
Historical and Political background in Argentina
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Extremo sureste de América del Sur
Chile, Bolivia, Paraguay, Brasil y Uruguay
6 zonas dialectales distintas:
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La región costera
Zona occidental
Parte extrema noroccidental
Nordeste
La región central
Unos cuantos enclaves
El tema de la lengua estuvo presente durante
muchos siglos en Argentina:
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Indígenas
Llegaron a América hace unos 30.000 años, a Argentina hace
18.000 años mas o menos.
 Se afincaron en las montañas y en las llanuras.
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Antes de la colonización.
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El territorio estaba compuesto por varias culturas indígenas:
 Los Incas de Perú hablaban quechua.
 Los guaraníes en Paraguay.
 Los Araucanos y Mapuches.
Siglo XVI el arribo de los conquistadores españoles
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Américo Vespucio en 1502 primer encuentro español.
Tres modos de conquista:
La región de Buenos Aires
 El noroeste
 Chile
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Imposición de la lengua española.
La decadencia del imperio español.
La inmigración africana.
Las invasiones de Inglaterra en 1806 y 1807.
La independencia
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Independencia 1816. Declaración de la independencia
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Con la Independencia política llego la cultural y lingüística.
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La Constitución Argentina en 1853.
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Aunque no estaba dictado la lengua española era y sigue
siendo el idioma oficial.
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Muchas reformas en las siguientes décadas.
La inmigración
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Uno de los primeros inmigrantes fueron los españoles que a
su vez trajeron la inmigración africana (esclavos).
Durante la colonización muchos inmigrantes italianos y
portugueses.
Segunda mitad del siglo XIX y la primera mitad del siglo XX:
el boom de la inmigración.
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La inmigración europea durante los años 1880-1914
 60% de la populación de la Capital y casi el 30% de las
provincias de Santa Fe, Córdoba y Buenos Aires inmigrantes.
 La mayoría italianos.
 Gente de muchos países.
Otros idiomas o jergas
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El Cocoliche: era una variedad mixta del español e italiano,
hablada por los inmigrantes italianos a finales del siglo XIX
y a principios del siglo XX.
El Lunfardo: una jerga utilizada en la región del Rio de la
Plata.
Aparte de estas jergas hoy en día en algunas regiones de
Argentina hay idiomas cooficiales o se hablan como segundo
idioma.
El guaraní
 Quechua
 Gales
 Qom, Moqoit y Wichi.
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Specific Linguistic Features
 Within Argentina there are a number of regional and
social variations; Argentina cannot be viewed as
homogonous.
 Lipski: the variant that ‘porteños’ (residents of Buenos
Aires) speak overshadows all others across the country.
 De Mirandi and De Battini identify at least 6 large
dialects within Argentina.
Regional Variations
1. Coastal region - extending from Buenos Aires,
Entre Rios and Santa Fe to extreme southern
Argentina.
2. Extreme western Argentina, inc. Mendoza and
San Juan.
3. Extreme northwest portion including Tucumán.
4. The North East, including Corrientes and parts of
the Chaco.
5. Central region, surrounding Cordoba, is a
transitory zone.
6. A few small enclaves, such as the dialect of
Santiago del Estero.
Phonetic Traits Across Argentina
 Word final /n/ becomes alveolar
 E.g. estación, communicación...
 Loss of intervocalic /d/
 words ending in '-ado', or the participle '-ido'
 The loss or weakening of /s/ at the end of a word
 /'xe-fe/  /'xe-fɛ/
jefe
 /'ka-sa/  /'ka-sa/
casa
 /'po-ko/  /'po-kɔ/
poco
 [lo-’pa-nɛ]
los panes
 does not occur with vowels /i/ and /u/
 Buenos Aires – use of aspiration is generally preferred
over complete loss of /s/; loss carries a sociolinguistic
stigma.
 Corrientes and Misiones – loss of /s/ is widespread and
accepted, carries no stigma and is used by all social
classes.
 Affricate /tʃ/ (ch) almost never loses its occlusive
element to become fricative /ʃ/.
 If this were to occur, could create many homonyms
resulting from prevalence of pronunciation of /y/ as /ʃ/
Morphological Variations
 Voseo – use of ‘vos’ in place of ‘tu’ for 2nd person
singular
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Verbal endings are normally -ás, -és, -ís
in the Northeast (Quechua influenced) use of -ís for 2nd
person conjugation found mainly among uneducated rural
speakers.
 Loísmo: Most of Argentina uses 'lo' as third person
singular direct object.
Some area specific variations
 Buenos Aires
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The /rr/ is pronounced as an alveolar trill
Yeísmo - No differentiation exists between /λ/ and /y/
Zeísmo - pronunciation of /λ/ and /y/ as /ʃ/ (unvoiced) or /dz/
(voiced).
E.g. Llaves [‘λa- βes] as [‘ʃa- βes]
 Northeast/Guaraní-influenced zone
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/r/ often dropped from the end of words, particularly infinitives.
Misiones and Corrientes: /λ/ has been preserved, scattered presence
of yeísmo
 Northwestern/Quechua-influenced zone
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Santiago del Estero: /y/ pronounced [y], but /λ/ is pronounced [dz]
EL ESPAÑOL DE ARGENTINA
LA IDEA DE
PRESTIGIO
PRESTIGIO
Un dialecto de prestigio es un dialecto hablado por las
personas mas prestigiosas, es decir, las que tienen más
influencia dentro de la comunidad desde el punto de
vista político, económico y social.
El español hablado en Argentina se caracteriza por la
huella que han dejado varios acontecimientos
importantes en la historia de este país como la llegada
de los conquistadores, los esclavos africanos, la
inmigración tanto europea como de otras partes del
continente americano
PRESTIGIO
Con la llegada de los conquistadores, la presencia
indígena se hizo cada vez menos pronunciada
aunque existe una influencia clara en los distintos
dialectos hablados en Argentina.
Por otro lado la presencia de los esclavos africanos
en la zona no llegó del todo a influir de alguna
manera ya que no hay ningún influjo lingüístico o
cultural.
PRESTIGIO
No obstante, una vez conseguida la independencia
política, la independencia cultura y lingüística no
tardaron en llegar. Esto junto a la gran cantidad de
inmigración debido a la Segunda Guerra Mundial
hizo que lo llamado “argentino” se defina aun más
como nación.
Aunque
fueron numerosos los inmigrantes
europeos, fue la inmigración italiana la que ha
ejercido el influjo lingüístico más notable en el
español de Argentina.
PRESTIGIO
Como la parte donde la mayoría de los inmigrantes
se asentaban era en Buenos Aires, es allí donde se
empezaron a desarrollar rasgos tales como el yeísmo
y el lleísmo o el rehilamiento, que son los principales
rasgos por lo que se conoce el español de Argentina.
Sin embargo a principios del siglo XIX cuando estos
rasgos eran vistos como algo “provincial” tal como lo
deja claro el viajero inglés Alexander Caldeleugh:
PRESTIGIO
“The Spanish spoken in Buenos Ayres is colonial,
or rather provincial, anything but pure Castilian.
Many of the words in most common use are sadly
altered from their true pronunciation. Cavallo is
pronounced Cavadjo, Calle Cadje, and yo jo.”
También por otro lado, el yeismo era “un vicio de
pronunciación propio de la plebe, de la chusma y no
hubiera por tanto colocado como ejemplo de buen
hablar a quien lo practicase.”
PRESTIGIO
No obstante, la independencia de la metrópoli no
fue solo política sino también lingüística y cultural.
Por tanto se funda la Academia de las Lenguas en
América que hace que todo aquello que era
considerado como vulgar o coloquial sea visto desde
otra perspectiva, es decir, como una característica
que contribuye a formar identidad de la nación.
Chile:
History, Origins &
Politics of Chilean
Spanish
Brief history of Chile
 1520: first European traveller arrived
 1541: Pedro de Valdivia began conquering Chile
(did it by splitting the country up into smaller
sections)
 Colonisation affected the indigenous populations
severely (disease, fighting to keep land)
 1600s: mestizo ethnic group grew in number
Language in Chile
 9 living and 7 extinct languages
 Spanish is the official language
 14 million Spanish speakers out of 16 million
population
 Many native languages
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Mapudungun
Quechua
Rapa Nui (Easter Island)
Huilliche
Central Aymará
Kawésqar
Yámana
 Extinct languages
 Language changes due to mixed marriages
Mapuche Languages
 Spoken mainly in Chile, but also in parts of
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Argentina
Main family of native languages
2 branches: Huilliche and Mapudungun
Some similarities to Quechua
200,000 fluent speakers in Chile
Taught in schools in recent years
Origins of Chilean Spanish
 Loan words from Native Languages
 Mainly Quechuan
Vegetables
 Food
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Mapudungun influence
Plants
 Animals
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 Andalusian pronunciation
 Sometimes unintelligible to Standard Castilian
speakers
Linguistic Differences
 Chile can be divided up into four geographical areas:
northern, central, south and the island of Chiloé.
 There is not much linguistic variation between the
speakers in each area.
 However there is a considerable amount of linguistic
variation in the Spanish spoken by different social
classes.
Morphological Differences
 Use of voseo with special verb forms.
e.g. tenís instead of tienes, hablái instead
of hablas
 2 different ways of using voseo:-
1) Pronominal and verbal voseo e.g. vos venís
2) Verbal voseo, using the pronoun tú, e.g. tu hablái
 Dominance of the analytical future, i.e. ir a + infinitive
Phonetic Characteristics
 Yeísmo
The assimilation of the phonemes /ʎ/, spelled <ll>, and /j/, spelled <y>.
E.g. cayó and calló are both pronounced [kaˈjo].
- Oroz (1966) notes that in some isolated rural areas of Southern
Chile patches of lleísmo are still found
 Word-final and syllable-final /s/ is aspirated to [h] or lost entirely.
e.g. los chilenos is [lɔh t͡ʃiˈleːnɔ]
- amongst the educated urban classes the /s/ is aspirated, and
total loss is stigmatised (apart from in phrase-final position)
- in the extreme northeast along the border with Bolivia where
some retention of sibilant [s] is found among Aymara speakers.
 The velar consonants /k/, /ɡ/, and /x/ are
palatalised before front vowels.
e.g. queso = [ˈceːso]
guía = [ˈʝia]
jinete = [çiˈn̪eːt̪e]
 Between vowels and word-finally, /d/ commonly
elides or weakens.
e.g. contado = [kon̪ˈt̪aːo]
ciudad = [sjuˈð̞aː]
 Instability of unstressed vowels
Predominant in informal speech
In central Chile (el salar de Atacama) the unstressed
vowels tend to close, especially in word-final positions.
e.g. gato = [gá:ttu]
despacho = [tihpáso]
 Word-final /n/ is alveolar.
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Velarisation is only found in the extreme northern area
of the country which once belonged to Peru.
 Neutralisation of syllable-final liquids (/l/ and /r/)
Oroz (1966) and Silva-Corvalán (1987) state that this is
more frequent amongst the lower social classes, and the latter
also notes that this trend is disappearing among the younger
generations.
 /č / (=ch) and its frequent prepalatal articulation similar to
[tˢ] as a distinguishing feature of Chilean Spanish.
 The voiceless postalveolar affricate /t͡ʃ/ is pronounced as a
fricative [ʃ] by many the lower-class speakers
e.g. Chile is pronounced [ˈʃiːle])
Chilean Spanish
 Any variety of Spanish spoken in most of Chile
 Has different vocabulary, grammar and pronunciation
from standard Spanish
 3 major influences: indigenous languages (Mapuche
and Quechua), 'rioplatense' Spanish, and that of the
European immigrants of the mid-1800s
 There are also great differences depending on social
class and geography
 Originally similar to the Andalusian dialect
 More vocabulary derived from the Quechua
language than from Nahuatl or Taíno as in
standard Spanish
 Also words loaned from other neighbouring
Amerindian languages (Mapudungan, Coa and
Lunfardo)
 High use of slang and local expressions which
makes it hard for foreigners to understand
 Number of phonetic features common to
Chilean Spanish
 It is the particular combination of certain
phonetic features that differentiate
Chilean from other Spanish dialects
 One of the most obvious features of the
Chilean accent is that final syllables and 's'
sounds are usually aspirated
 The use of Voseo is common in Chile, with both
Verbal and Pronominal voseo being widely used in
the spoken language
 However, unlike in Argentina, is it not deemed
acceptable as part of any written document except as
reported speech.
 Voseo is usually considered bad linguistic form and
tends to label the speaker as rude, unsophisticated or
uneducated
 Chileans rarely use the voseo and tuteo forms in the
second person familiar, as in many other Latin
American countries
 A comparison of the conjugation of the Chilean voseo,
the general voseo used in other Latin American
countries, and the tuteo
 Due to certain factors Chilean Spanish is not seen to
be as prestigious as other variations of the Spanish
languages
 This is in part due to the high level of slang and local
expressions used which not only makes it hard for
non-native speakers to understand, but also makes it
a less formal language
 As well as this a lot of the grammar and vocabulary
used can not only be seen as unsophisticated but
offensive and insulting if not used properly
 Finally as there is high variation in the language
between different social classes and the rural/urban
divide certain types can make the speaker seem less
educated