Concept in Definition ABC

Understand a way of speaking typical of the city of Buenos Aires. It is a set of terms and expressions that make up a variant of Spanish. The origin of this specific vocabulary is directly related to the history of Argentina and, more specifically, with the arrival of Italian emigrants throughout the 19th and 20th centuries to the city of Buenos Aires. Aires.

In its origins, the lunfardo vocabulary was used by the popular classes that lived in the tenements of Buenos Aires. At the end of the 19th century it was considered the dialect of criminals.

On the other hand, it must be taken into account that the population of Italian origin had difficulties when it came to expressing themselves in Spanish and spontaneously a new way of speaking was configured

With the passage of time, the lunfardo spread among the different social layers among the porteños. Despite this, in the 1940s the Argentine authorities tried to stop its use in the media. communicationas this jargon was considered to distort and pervert the Spanish language.

Regarding the origin of the word, linguists maintain that it comes from the Italian word Lumbardo, that is, the person who comes from the Italian region of Lombardy.

The distinction between language and speech and some examples

Language and speech are different concepts, since a language is the language majority of a people and a speech is a linguistic system used by a group. In Brazil the majority language is Portuguese and a specific way of speaking it is Giria.

In Great Britain, the language is English, but there is also slang or cockney as you speak specific (slang is the speech colloquial used in informal situations and cockney is concrete London slang).

In Spain there are different forms of Castilian or Spanish, such as castúo in Extremadura or panocho in Murcia. Lunfardo and the different linguistic varieties mentioned have something in common, since they are all different from the standard language.

In 1962 a group of Buenos Aires writers and journalists founded a private non-profit institution, the Academia Porteña del Lunfardo.

The objective of this entity is the diffusion of the popular culture of the city of Buenos Aires. At the same time, it focuses on the study of lunfardo in different fields, such as its influence on tango, on the literature or in the history of Argentina.

Some studies on the origin of porteño popular culture affirm that tango and lunfardo arose in the same social and historical context. The link between the two is highlighted in the lyrics of the tangos.

The "language" of the porteños is no longer a suburban slang, but is part of the identitycultural from the city of Buenos Aires. For this reasonEvery September 5, the Day of the Lunfardo is celebrated.

Photo: Fotolia - Andrey Kiselev