Lunfardo

Lunfardo (Spanish pronunciation: [luɱˈfaɾðo]; from the Italian lombardo[1] or inhabitant of Lombardy, lumbard in Lombard) is an argot originated and developed in the late 19th and early 20th centuries in the lower classes in the Río de la Plata region (encompassing the port cities of Buenos Aires and Montevideo) and from there spread to other urban areas nearby, such as the Greater Buenos Aires, Santa Fe and Rosario.

[2][3] Lunfardo originated from the mixture of languages and dialects produced due to the massive European immigration, mainly Italian and Spanish, which arrived in the ports of the region since the end of the 19th century.

According to Oscar Conde, the word came from "lumbardo" (the inhabitants of the region Lombardia in Italy, the origin of most[citation needed] of the Italians in Argentina in the early 20th century).

[6] However, the vernacular Spanish of mid-19th century Buenos Aires as preserved in the dialogue of Esteban Echeverría's short story The Slaughter Yard (El matadero) is already a prototype of Lunfardo.

[citation needed] Conde takes the view that the Lunfardo is not so much a dialect but a kind of local language of the Italian immigrants, mixed with Spanish and some French words.

[10] According to Conde, Lunfardo ...is a vernacular, or to put it more clearly, is a vocabulary of popular speech in Buenos Aires that spread first throughout the entire River Plate area and later to the whole country...

The use of this lexicon reminds speakers of their identity but also of their roots... Lunfardo is possibly the only argot that was originally formed, and in great measure, from Italian immigrant terms.

A characteristic of Lunfardo is its use of word play, notably vesre (from "[al] revés"), reversing the syllables, similar to English back slang, French verlan, Serbo-Croatian Šatrovački or Greek Podaná.

Some examples of modern talk: Many new terms had spread from specific areas of the dynamic Buenos Aires cultural scene: invented by screenwriters, used around the arts-and-crafts fair in Plaza Francia, culled from the vocabulary of psychoanalysis.