Language
Main article: Languages of Argentina See also: Rioplatense Spanish and List of indigenous languages in ArgentinaThe spoken languages of Argentina number at least 40, although Spanish is dominant. Others include native and other immigrant languages; some languages are extinct and others are endangered, spoken by elderly people whose descendants do not speak the languages.
You can download the clip or download a player to play the clip in your browser. Spoken Argentine Spanish about the country's geography.
The most prevalent dialect is Rioplatense, also known as "Argentine Spanish", whose speakers are located primarily in the basin of the Río de la Plata. Argentines are amongst the few Spanish-speaking countries (like Uruguay, El Salvador, and Honduras) that almost universally use what is known as voseo — the use of the pronoun vos instead of tú (Spanish for "you").
In many of the central and north-eastern areas of the country, the “rolling 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").
South Bolivian Quechua is a Quechuan language spoken by some 800,000 people, mostly immigrants who have arrived in the last years. There are 70,000 estimated speakers in Salta Province. The language is also known as Central Bolivian Quechua, which has six dialects. It is classified as a Quechua II language, and is referred to as Quechua IIC by linguists.
Guaraní is also spoken, mainly in the Mesopotamia, and is an official language in the province of Corrientes.
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Famous quotes containing the word language:
“We find that the child who does not yet have language at his command, the child under two and a half, will be able to cooperate with our education if we go easy on the “blocking” techniques, the outright prohibitions, the “no’s” and go heavy on “substitution” techniques, that is, the redirection or certain impulses and the offering of substitute satisfactions.”
—Selma H. Fraiberg (20th century)
“It would seem as if the very language of our parlors would lose all its nerve and degenerate into palaver wholly, our lives pass at such remoteness from its symbols, and its metaphors and tropes are necessarily so far fetched.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“The necessity of poetry has to be stated over and over, but only to those who have reason to fear its power, or those who still believe that language is “only words” and that an old language is good enough for our descriptions of the world we are trying to transform.”
—Adrienne Rich (b. 1929)