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:
“There is no such thing as a language, not if a language is anything like what many philosophers and linguists have supposed. There is therefore no such thing to be learned, mastered, or born with. We must give up the idea of a clearly defined shared structure which language-users acquire and then apply to cases.”
—Donald Davidson (b. 1917)
“But as some silly young men returning from France affect a broken English, to be thought perfect in the French language; so his Lordship, I think, to seem a perfect understander of the unintelligible language of the Schoolmen, pretends an ignorance of his mother-tongue. He talks here of command and counsel as if he were no Englishman, nor knew any difference between their significations.”
—Thomas Hobbes (1579–1688)