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Lunfardo was a colorful, slangy argot of the Spanish language which developed at the end of the 19th century and beginning of the 20th century in the lower classes in and around Buenos Aires. Slang is the non-standard use of words in a language of a particular social group, and sometimes the creation of new words or importation of words from another language. ...
Argot is primarily slang used by various groups, including but not limited to thieves and other criminals, to prevent outsiders from understanding their conversations. ...
This article is about the international language known as Spanish. ...
Alternative meaning: Nineteenth Century (periodical) (18th century — 19th century — 20th century — more centuries) As a means of recording the passage of time, the 19th century was that century which lasted from 1801-1900 in the sense of the Gregorian calendar. ...
(19th century - 20th century - 21st century - more centuries) Decades: 1900s 1910s 1920s 1930s 1940s 1950s 1960s 1970s 1980s 1990s As a means of recording the passage of time, the 20th century was that century which lasted from 1901–2000 in the sense of the Gregorian calendar (1900–1999 in the...
Buenos Aires (Good Airs in Spanish, originally meaning Fair Winds) is the capital of Argentina and its largest city and port, as well as one of the largest cities in Latin America. ...
Many Lunfardo expressions have entered into the popular language and have become an integral part of the Spanish spoken in Argentina and Uruguay. A few have been recognized even by the Real Academia Española. Lunfardo is frequently found in the lyrics of tangos, supplying nuances and double-entendres with overtones of sex, drugs, and the criminal underworld. The Real Academia Española (Spanish for Royal Spanish Academy; often RAE) is the institution responsible for regulating the Spanish language. ...
Argentine Tango music is traditionally played by an orquesta tipica, which often includes violin, piano, guitar, flute, and especially bandoneon. ...
A crime in a broad sense is an act that violates a political or moral law of any one person or social grouping. ...
Development Much of Lunfardo arrived with European immigrants, such as Italians, French, Portuguese, and Poles. It should be noted that Italian immigrant spoke their regional dialects and not standard Italian; other words arrived from the pampa by means of the gauchos; a small number originated in Argentina's black population. The Pampas (from Quechua, meaning plain) are the fertile South American lowlands that include the Argentine provinces of Buenos Aires, La Pampa, Santa Fe, and Córdoba, most of Uruguay, and the southernmost end of Brazil, covering more than 750,000 km² (290,000 square miles). ...
Gauchos fight dramatization A gaucho is a South American cattle herder, the equivalent to the North American cowboy in Argentina, Uruguay, Paraguay and (with the spelling gaúcho) southern Brazil, and formerly the Falkland Islands. ...
Most sources believe that Lunfardo originated in jails, as a prisoner-only argot. Circa 1900, the word lunfardo itself (originally a deformation of lombardo in several Italian dialects) was used to mean "outlaw". Lombardy (Italian: Lombardia) is a region in northern Italy between the Alps and the Po Valley. ...
Characteristics Lunfardo words are inserted in the normal flow of Rioplatense Spanish sentences. Thus, a Mexican reading tango lyrics will need, at most, the translation of a discrete set of words, and not a grammar guide. Rioplatense Spanish (castellano rioplatense) is a dialect of the Spanish language which is mainly spoken in the areas in and around the River Plate basin, in Argentina, Uruguay, Nicaragua and Costa Rica. ...
Most tango lyrics use lunfardo sparsely, yet others (such as El Ciruja, or most lyrics by Celedonio Flores) employ lunfardo heavily.
A characteristic of lunfardo is its use of wordplay, notably vesre (reversing the syllables). Thus, tango becomes gotán and café con leche (café au lait) becomes feca con chele. Word play is a literary technique in which the nature of the words used themselves become part of the subject of the work. ...
Vesre (reversing the order of syllables) is one of the features of the Buenos Aires argot of Spanish known as lunfardo. ...
Lunfardo employs ingenious metaphors such as bobo ("dumb") for the heart, who "works all day long without being paid", or bufoso ("snorter") for pistol. The heart and lungs (from an older edition of Grays Anatomy) The heart (Latin cor) is a hollow, muscular organ that pumps blood through the blood vessels by repeated, rhythmic contractions. ...
For the coin, see pistole For the part of a flower, see pistil. ...
Finally, there are words that are derived from others in Spanish, such as the verb abarajar, which means to stop your opponent's blows with the blade of your knife and is related to the verb "barajar", which means to cut or shuffle a deck of cards.
Examples - Manyar - To know (from the Italian mangiare -to eat-)
- Morfar - To eat (from French argot morfer -to eat-)
- Laburar - To work (from Italian argot lavoro -work-)
- Algo voy a cerebrar - I'll think something up (cerebrar from cerebro -brains-)
- Chochamu - Young man (vesre for muchacho)
- Gurí - Boy (from Guaraní -boy-) Feminine: gurisa - girl. Plural: gurises - kids, young boys and girls
- Gomías - Friends (vesre for amigos)
- Fiaca - laziness (from the Italian fiaco -weak-)
- Engrupir - To fool someone (origin unknown, but also used in modern european Portuguese slang).
- Junar - To look to / To know (from Caló junar -to hear-)
Vesre (reversing the order of syllables) is one of the features of the Buenos Aires argot of Spanish known as lunfardo. ...
Guaraní (gwah-rah-nee) [gwarani] (local name: avañeẽ) is a language spoken in Argentina, Bolivia, Paraguay and southwestern Brazil. ...
Caló or Spanish Romani is a jargon spoken by the Gitanos or Zincarli originating from Spain: Caló blends native Romany vocabulary with Spanish grammar (1), as Spanish Gypsies lost the full use of their ancestral language. ...
Modern Buenos Aires Slang Since the 1970s, it is a matter of debate whether newer additions to the slang of Buenos Aires qualify as lunfardo. Traditionalists argue that lunfardo must have a link to the argot of the old underworld, to tango lyrics, or to racetrack slang. Others maintain that the colloquial language of Buenos Aires is lunfardo—by definition.
Some examples of modern talk:
- Gomas (lit. tires) - woman's breasts
- Maza (lit. sledgehammer) - superb
- Curtir (lit. to tan) - to be involved in
- Curtir fierros can mean "to be into car mechanics" or "to be into firearms" (see Notes below)
- Zafar - to barely get by (see Notes below)
- Trucho - counterfeit, fake (see Notes below)
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, or created by the lyricists of cumbia villera. Psychoanalysis is a family of psychological theories and methods within the field of psychotherapy that seeks to elucidate connections among unconscious components of patients mental processes, and to do so in a systematic way through a process of tracing out associations. ...
Cumbia villera (shantytown cumbia, ) is a typically Argentine form of cumbia music born in the villas miseria (shantytowns) around Buenos Aires and then popularized in the villas of other large urban settlements. ...
Only a very staunch conservative would deny lunfardo status to this verse from cumbia villera band Los Pibes Chorros ("The Thieving Kids"): "Al primero que se haga el ortiba / por pancho y careta le vamos a dar" (see Notes below).
Recatate or Rescatate? There is a relatively new slang word gaining popularity. Because of the aspirated s used in Buenos Aires, in the word rescatate (save yourself) the letter s can sometimes be lost and sound like recatate (be careful, observe modesty). The meaning is unclear too. For example, if someone is being provoked, he can be answering rescatate (save yourself [from the beating I'm gonna give you]), or recatate (be careful [because you will get hurt]). So the word itself is unclear. While recatate appears to be a more appropiate term, because of its meaning, people seem to think that they're saying rescatate. Recato (modesty, caution) is more formal, while rescate (rescue) is a more widely used. As the people who started using this word (lower class people, villeros) are mostly uneducated, "rescatate" is what they claim to pronounce.
See also - Cocoliche, a Buenos-Aires pidgin of Spanish and Italian
- Germanía
- Vesre, a common reversing syllables wordplay found in lunfardo
- Jeringozo, twisted game with leters for encrypted messsages.
Cocoliche is an Italian pidgin spoken in Buenos Aires, Argentina. ...
GermanÃa or jerigonza is the term used in Spanish to refer to the argot used by criminals or in jails. ...
Vesre (reversing the order of syllables) is one of the features of the Buenos Aires argot of Spanish known as lunfardo. ...
Jeringozo is a language game on the Spanish language played by children in Argentina and many other countries. ...
Notes - Zafar is actually a standard Spanish word (originally meaning to extricate oneself) that had fallen out of use and was restituted to everyday Buenos Aires speech in the 1980s by students, with the meaning of "barely passing (an examination)".
- Trucho is from old Spanish slang truchamán, which in turn derives from the Arabic turjeman ("translator", referring specifically to a person who accosts foreigners and lures them into tourist traps). There is also a folk etymology that derives this word from trucha (trout).
- Fierro is the Old Spanish form of hierro (iron). In Argentine parlance, it can mean a firearm or anything related to metals and mechanics, for example a racing car.
- Ortiba is vesre for batidor ("informant" in lunfardo).
The Arabic language (; , less formally, ) is the largest member of the Semitic branch of the Afro-Asiatic language family (classification: South Central Semitic) and is closely related to Hebrew and Aramaic. ...
Folk etymology (or popular etymology) is a linguistic term for a category of false etymology which has grown up in popular lore, as opposed to one which arose in scholarly usage. ...
Rainbow trout (Oncorhynchus mykiss) Biwa trout (Oncorhynchus masou subsp) Trout is the common name given to a number of species of freshwater fishes belonging to the salmon family, Salmonidae. ...
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