An Italian Argentine (Spanish and Italian: italo-argentino) is a person born in Argentina of Italian ancestry. It is estimated up to 24 million Argentines have some degree of Italian descent (up to 60% of the total population). Italians began arriving in Argentina in great numbers from 1857 to 1940, totaling 44.9% of the entire immigrant population; more than from any other country (including Spain at 31.5%), and this migratory flow continued to the early 1950s, with Italy also having the most emigrants to Argentina for the decades 1980–2000. Because of this, Italian descent is at least 60% of the population, almost 25 million.
Italian settlement in Argentina, along with Spanish settlement, formed the backbone of today's Argentine society. Argentine culture has significant connections to Italian culture in terms of language, customs and traditions.
Read more about Italian Argentine: History, Statistics
Famous quotes containing the word italian:
“Semantically, taste is rich and confusing, its etymology as odd and interesting as that of “style.” But while style—deriving from the stylus or pointed rod which Roman scribes used to make marks on wax tablets—suggests activity, taste is more passive.... Etymologically, the word we use derives from the Old French, meaning touch or feel, a sense that is preserved in the current Italian word for a keyboard, tastiera.”
—Stephen Bayley, British historian, art critic. “Taste: The Story of an Idea,” Taste: The Secret Meaning of Things, Random House (1991)