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- Drug-trafficking gang detained holding 93 kilos of cocaine in Moreno [04/15/2011]
- Gov’t says political reform 'will not distort the open primary election process' [04/15/2011]
- Gov’t officializes use of combined-list ballots for October elections [04/15/2011]
- Ex-Bodegas Giol site demolition commences [04/15/2011]
Linguistic Affiliation
The majority of the population speaks Spanish. Argentines say that it is more appropriate to call their language Castilian, because this term expresses more clearly the region in Spain where it originated and from where it was imposed on other peoples. There are slight regional variations in vocabulary, intonation, and in the pronunciation of certain sounds such as " y " and " ll. " At the time of the Spanish conquest, the land was inhabited by various indigenous groups, but most of the original languages and communities have been irrevocably lost. Two indigenous languages, Quechua and Guaraní, became lingua franca and were learned by scholars and by nonindigenous settlers in specific regions of Argentina. Quechua was mainly used in northwestern and central provinces, while Guarani was mainly spoken in the northeast. Today, they are spoken by some residents in provinces such as Santiago del Estero and Corrientes. Knowledge of these languages is generally devalued and rarely acknowledged. No serious official efforts exist to preserve indigenous languages. Only a few schools attempt to offer bilingual education for indigenous children. The Argentine school system has never developed special education programs for bilingual children, either during the great migration at the end of the nineteenth century or with the late twentieth century influx of Latin American, eastern European, African, and Asian migrant populations. Besides regional variations of Spanish and indigenous languages, Argentines often employ some lunfardo terms and linguistic structure in their colloquial language. Initially used by people such as criminals and prostitutes, Lunfardo became popular through tango music and has been gradually adopted by all class sectors. Lunfardo borrows and transforms words from Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, French, and indigenous languages such as Quechua, reflecting the complex processes of the formation of national cultures in both their popular and cultivated expressions.