Phonology Rioplatense Spanish distinguishes itself from other dialects of Spanish by the pronunciation of certain consonants. • 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 Aires 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. 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
Canarian dialect.
Pronouns and verb conjugation and Eastern
Bolivia (
Media Luna) – are represented by dark blue. Argentina is the
largest country that uses the . 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: 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: 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). The imperative forms for is formed by dropping the final -r from the infinitive and stressing the last syllable. Thus the form is identical to stressing the last syllable of all
regular imperative forms in Peninsular: •
Hablá más fuerte, por favor. "Speak louder, please" (
habla in Peninsular) •
Comé un poco de torta. "Eat some cake" (
come in Peninsular) However, irregular verbs in Peninsular are not identical except for stress: •
Vení para acá. "Come over here" (
ven in Peninsular) •
Hacé lo que te dije. "Do what I told you" (
haz in Peninsular) The verb
ir (to go) is not used in this form except for the Argentine province of
Tucumán, where it's conjugated
ite. The corresponding form of the verb
andar (to walk, to go) substitutes for it. •
Andá para allá. "Go there" (
ve in Peninsular) The plural imperative uses the form (i. e. the third person plural subjunctive, as corresponding to
ellos). As for the subjunctive forms of verbs, while they tend to take the conjugation, some speakers do use the classical conjugation, employing the form minus the
i in the final diphthong. Many consider only the subjunctive forms to be correct. •
Espero que veas or
Espero que veás "I hope that you see..." (Peninsular
veáis) •
Lo que quieras or (less used)
Lo que quierás/querás "Whatever you want" (Peninsular
queráis) In the
preterite, an
s is sometimes added, for instance
(vos) perdistes. This corresponds to the classical conjugation found in literature. Compare Iberian Spanish form
vosotros perdisteis. Other verb forms coincide with after the
i is omitted (the forms are the same as ). •
Si salieras "If you went out" (Peninsular
salierais)
Usage In the old times, was used as a respectful term. In Rioplatense, as in most other dialects which employ , this pronoun has become informal, supplanting the use of (compare
you in English, which used to be formal singular but has supplanted the former informal singular pronoun
thou). It is used especially for addressing friends and family members (regardless of age), but may also include most acquaintances, such as co-workers, friends of one's friends, etc.
Usage of tenses Although literary works use the full spectrum of verb inflections, in Rioplatense (as well as many other Spanish dialects), the future tense tends to use a verbal phrase (
periphrasis) in the informal language. This verb phrase is formed by the verb
ir ("to go") followed by the preposition
a ("to") and the main verb in the infinitive. This resembles the English phrase
to be going to + infinitive verb. For example: •
Creo que descansaré un poco →
Creo que voy a descansar un poco (I think I will rest a little → I think I am going to rest a little) •
Mañana me visitará mi madre →
Mañana me va a visitar mi madre (Tomorrow my mother will visit me → Tomorrow my mother is going to visit me) •
La visitaré mañana →
La voy a visitar mañana (I will visit her tomorrow → I am going to visit her tomorrow) The
present perfect (Spanish: Pretérito perfecto compuesto), just like
pretérito anterior, is rarely used: the simple past replaces it. However, the Present Perfect is still used in Northwestern Argentina, particularly in the province of
Tucumán. •
Juan no ha llegado todavía →
Juan no llegó todavía (Juan has not arrived yet → Juan did not arrive yet) •
El torneo ha comenzado →
El torneo empezó (The tournament has begun → The tournament began) •
Ellas no han votado →
Ellas no votaron (They have not voted → They did not vote) But, in the subjunctive mood, the
present perfect is still widely used: •
No creo que lo hayan visto ya (I don't believe they have already seen him) •
Espero que lo hayas hecho ayer (I hope you did it yesterday) In
Buenos Aires a reflexive form of verbs is often used – "
se viene" instead of "
viene'', etc. == Influence beyond Argentina ==