Lunfardo

Lunfardo is a dialect originated and developed in the late 19th and early 20th centuries in the lower classes in Buenos Aires and the surrounding Gran Buenos Aires, and from there spread to other cities nearby, such as Rosario and Montevideo, cities with similar socio-cultural situations. Originally, Lunfardo was a slang used by criminals and soon by other people of the lower and lower-middle classes. Later, many of its words and phrases were introduced in the vernacular and disseminated Castilian of Argentina and Uruguay. Nevertheless, since the early 20th century, Lunfardo began to spread among all social strata and classes, either by habitual use or because it was common in the lyrics of tango. During the 20th and this century many of its words have gone to neighboring countries like Chile and Paraguay, because immigrants from those countries are living in Argentina.

A few have been recognized even by the Real Academia Española.