The spoken languages of Argentina number at least 40 although Spanish is dominant. Others include native and other immigrant languages; two languages are extinct and others are endangered, spoken by elderly people whose descendants do not speak the languages.
Argentina is predominantly a Spanish-speaking country — the fourth largest after Mexico, Spain, and Colombia (according to a compilation of national census figures and United Nations estimates, see List of countries with Spanish-speaking populations). Based on the 2010 national census and supporting research, there are about 40.9 million Spanish speakers in Argentina (almost the entire population).
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 (the familiar "you"). The most prevalent dialect is Rioplatense, whose speakers are located primarily in the basin of the Río de la Plata.
A phonetic study conducted by the Laboratory for Sensory Investigations of CONICET and the University of Toronto showed that the accent of the inhabitants of Buenos Aires (known as porteños) is closer to that of the Neapolitan dialect of Italian than to that of any other spoken language. Italian immigration influenced Lunfardo, the slang spoken in the Río de la Plata region, permeating the vernacular vocabulary of other regions as well.
As in other large countries, the accents vary depending on geographical location. Extreme differences in pronunciation can be heard within Argentina. One common accent notable to Argentina is the “sh” sounding y and ll. In most Spanish speaking countries the letters y and ll are pronounced like “y” in yo-yo, however in most parts of Argentina will be pronounced like “zh”
As previously mentioned voseo is commonly used in Argentina while with its own slight variation. These variations are most obvious in informal commands. When using the Spanish tú form the following sentence would look like this, “venid” (for vosotros, "come ") or “ven tú”, in Argentine Castellano it would be “vení vos” (the imperative form of the verb is illustrated here). Usually, the vos form of verb conjugation (in the indicative) is simply done by dropping the “i” from the vosotros conjugation. See the article on voseo for more details.
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".) For Example, “Río Segundo” sounds like “Zhio Segundo” and “Corrientes” sounds like “Cozhientes”. For those looking to learn this specific dialect, General Linguistics offers a program focusing on "Voseo" Spanish .
The ISO639 code for Argentinian Spanish is "es-AR".
Read more about Languages Of Argentina: Italian, Levantine Arabic, More Than 1,000 Speakers, More Than 100 Speakers, Endangered Languages, Extinct Languages, Other Languages
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