Rioplatense Spanish ( ; ), also known as Rioplatense Castilian or River Plate Spanish,Saab, Andrés. (2009). "On verbal duplication in River Plate Spanish". Selected papers from Going Romance. Nice 2009. is a variety of SpanishOrlando Alba, Zonificación dialectal del español en América ("Classification of the Spanish Language within Dialectal Zones in America"), in: César Hernández Alonso (ed.), "Historia presente del español de América", Pabecal: Junta de Castilla y León, 1992.Alvar, Manuel, "Manual de dialectología hispánica. El español de América", ("Handbook of Hispanic Dialectology. Spanish Language in America."). Barcelona 1996. originating in and around the Río de la Plata Basin, and now spoken throughout most of Argentina and Uruguay.Resnick, Melvyn: Phonological Variants and Dialects Identification in Latin American Spanish. The Hague 1975. This dialect is widely recognized throughout the Hispanosphere due to its strong influence from Italian languages, a result of significant historical Italian immigration to the region. As a consequence, it has incorporated numerous Italian loanwords—giving rise to the lunfardo argot—and is spoken with an intonation similar to that of the Neapolitan language from Southern Italy.
It is the most prominent dialect to employ voseo (the use of vos in place of the pronoun tú, along with special accompanying conjugations) in both speech and writing. Many features of Rioplatense Spanish are also shared with the varieties spoken in south and eastern Bolivia, as well as in Paraguay, particularly in regions bordering Argentina. It also strongly influences the fronteiriço, a pidgin spoken in Uruguay's border regions with Brazil, as a result of continuous interaction between the communities of both nations.
As Rioplatense is considered a dialect of Spanish and not a distinct language, there are no credible figures for a total number of speakers. The total population of these areas would amount to some 25–30 million, depending on the definition and expanse.
Location Rioplatense is the predominant Spanish variety spoken in both Argentina and Uruguay. In the former, it is primarily centered in major urban areas such as Buenos Aires, Rosario, Santa Fe, La Plata, Mar del Plata and Bahía Blanca—along with their surrounding suburbs and the regions connecting them, whereas in the latter, it is spoken nationwide, where it takes the form of Uruguayan Spanish.Particularities of the Spanish language in Uruguay
Beyond these core areas, Rioplatense Spanish extends to regions that, while not geographically adjacent, have been culturally influenced by these linguistic centers, including parts of Paraguay and the border regions of Brazil and Uruguay. It serves as the linguistic standard in audiovisual media across both Argentina and Uruguay.
History The Spanish language was introduced to the region during the colonial era. The Río de la Plata Basin, which originally formed part of the Viceroyalty of Peru, was granted its own status as the Viceroyalty of the Río de la Plata in 1776. Following the independence of both nations in the first half of the 19th century, the language spoken in the area—criollo Spanish—was largely unaffected by external linguistic influences and varied primarily due to regionalisms.
From the 1870s until the mid-1960s, large waves of European immigrants, primarily from Italy and Spain, began to arrive in Uruguay and Argentina. As a result, the ethnic and cultural composition of both countries, which were in the process of consolidating as nation-states, was profoundly influenced by the cultures of the new arrivals. The language adopted various features from the native languages of these immigrants, such as Neapolitan and Sicilian, which played a significant role in shaping Rioplatense.
European immigration Several languages, especially Italian, influenced the historical criollo Spanish of the region because of the diversity of the settlers and immigrants to Argentina and Uruguay: 1870–1890: mainly Northern Italian, Spanish, Basque, and Galician speakers, with some others from France, Germany, and more European countries. 1910–1945: again from Spain, Southern Italy, Portugal and, in smaller numbers, from across the remainder of Europe; Jewish immigration—mainly from Russian Empire and Poland from the 1910s until after World War II—was also significant. English and Welsh speakers were not as numerous, but made up a substantial number as well, with many Welshmen setting up colonies that still stand to this day.
Influence of indigenous populations Due to the disappearance of the indigenous population in Uruguay during the early years of the country as an independent state and the absence of a lasting cultural legacy from these peoples, there was no significant influence of native languages on Uruguayan Spanish. In contrast, in Argentina, there was a strong interaction with the languages of the indigenous peoples of the northern regions. Therefore, words from Guarani, Quechua, and other indigenous languages were incorporated into the local form of Spanish, and then spread.
Some words of Amerindian origin commonly used in Rioplatense Spanish are:
From Quechua: or (orig. 'poor person, vagabond, orphan'); the term for the native cowboys of the Pampas, , may be related. / (pop + , from , 'corn') – "popcorn" in Argentina From Guaraní: – 'popcorn' in Uruguay, Paraguay and some Argentine provinces.
Linguistic features Phonology Rioplatense Spanish distinguishes itself from other dialects of Spanish by the pronunciation of certain consonants. + Consonant phonemes Labial Denti-alveolar Palatal Velar Nasal Stop Continuant ~ Lateral Flap Trill
Like many other dialects, Rioplatense features : the sounds represented by (historically the palatal lateral ) and (historically the palatal approximant ) have fused into one. Thus, in Rioplatense, "he fell down" is homophonous with "he became silent". This merged phoneme is generally pronounced as a postalveolar fricative, either voiced (as in English measure or the French ) in the central and western parts of the dialect region (this phenomenon is called ) or voiceless (as in English shine or the French ), a phenomenon called that originated in and around Buenos AiresCharles B. Chang, "Variation in palatal production in Buenos Aires Spanish". Selected Proceedings of the 4th Workshop on Spanish Sociolinguistics, ed. Maurice Westmoreland and Juan Antonio Thomas, 54–63. Somerville, MA: Cascadilla Proceedings Project, 2008. but has expanded to the rest of Argentina and Uruguay. Both (those from Buenos Aires) and Montevideans perceive those speaking with as originating from their own country and those speaking with originating from the opposite country, despite the fact that is common in both. As in most American dialects, also, Rioplatense Spanish has seseo ( and are not distinguished, both being pronounced as ). Thus, ("house") is homophonous with ("hunt"). is common to other dialects of Spanish in the Americas, Canarian Spanish and Andalusian Spanish. In popular speech, the fricative has a very strong tendency to become "aspirated" before another consonant or a pause. (The resulting sound depends on what the following consonant is, although describing it as a voiceless glottal fricative, , would give a clear idea of the mechanism.) may also be aspirated at the end of a word preceding another word that begins in a vowel, though this is less common. Such word-final intervocalic -aspiration is most frequent in northern Argentina. For example, "this is the same" is commonly pronounced something like , but in "the blue eagles", the final in and might stay , as no consonant follows (), though it might still be aspirated as well (). The phoneme (written as before or , and as elsewhere) is never glottalized to in the Atlantic coast. That phenomenon is common to other coastal dialects in Hispanic American Spanish, but not the Rioplatense dialect. Rioplatense speakers always realize it as . Weakening the final before consonants through aspiration is the norm. However, this elision may be seen as a feature of uneducated speakers. In some contexts—when singing, for example—the level of aspiration may vary. Some speakers may also drop the final sound in verb infinitives. Many Argentinians merge into , meaning that "unsociable" and "uranium" are pronounced the same. is a relatively common allophone of . Some speakers employ it in emphatic pronunciation, especially when pronouncing words spelled with .
In Rioplatense Spanish, syllable-final is almost invariably aspirated to before a following consonant. Among speakers from lower socioeconomic backgrounds, this aspiration—often culminating in deletion—extends to all coda environments, including before vowels and at utterance-final pause. Frequent deletion of word-final in the same speech style further simplifies codas and favours a consonant–vowel (CV) rhythmic pattern in rapid informal speech.
"If you want to go, then go. I'm not going to stop you."
Intonation Rioplatense Spanish, especially the speech of all of Uruguay and the Buenos Aires area in Argentina, has intonation patterns that resemble those of Italian dialects. This correlates well with immigration patterns, since both Argentina and Uruguay have received large numbers of Italian settlers since the 19th century.Particularities of the Spanish language in Uruguay
According to a study conducted by National Scientific and Technical Research Council of Argentina, Buenos Aires and Rosario residents speak with an intonation most closely resembling Neapolitan. The researchers note this as a relatively recent phenomenon, starting in the beginning of the 20th century with the main wave of Southern Italian immigration. Before that, the porteño accent was more like that of Spain, especially Andalusia, and in case of Uruguay, the accent was more like the Canarian dialect.
Pronouns and verb conjugation
One of the features of the Argentine and Uruguayan speaking style is the : the usage of the pronoun for the second person singular, instead of . In other Spanish-speaking regions where is used, such as in Chile and Colombia, the use of voseo has at times been considered a nonstandard lower speaking style, whereas in Argentina and Uruguay it is standard.
The second person plural pronoun, which is in Spain, is replaced with in Rioplatense, as in most other Hispanic American dialects. While is the formal second person singular pronoun, its plural has a neutral connotation and can be used to address friends and acquaintances as well as in more formal occasions (see T–V distinction). takes a grammatically third-person plural verb.
As an example, see the conjugation table for the verb (to love) in the present tense, indicative mode:
+ Inflection of Person/Number Peninsular Rioplatense 1st sing. 2nd sing. 3rd sing. 1st plural 2nd plural is used throughout most of Hispanic America for both the familiar and formal. In Spain, outside of Canary Islands and Andalusia, it is used only in formal speech for the second person plural. 3rd plural
Although apparently there is just a stress shift (from to ), the origin of such a stress is the loss of the diphthong of the classical inflection from to . This can be better seen with the verb "to be": from to . In vowel-alternating verbs like and , the stress shift also triggers a change of the vowel in the root:
+ Inflection of Peninsular Rioplatense
For the verbs, the Peninsular forms end in , so there is no diphthong to simplify, and Rioplatense employs the same form: instead of , ; instead of , (note the alternation).