Notes: Italian Argentine
Italo Argentino
Notable Italian-Argentines
Carlos Pellegrini Arturo Frondizi stor Piazzolla
Luciana Pedraza Lionel Messi Gabriela Sabatini
Total population
25,000,000
60% of Argentina's population
Including whose mixed with other ancestries
Regions with significant populations
Throughout Argentina
Languages
Rioplatense Spanish. Minority speaks Italian and Italian dialects.
Religion
Predominantly Roman Catholicism
Related ethnic groups
Italians, Italian Brazilian, Italian American, Italian Uruguayan, Italo-Venezuelans
An Italian Argentine (Spanish and Italian: italo-argentino) is an Argentine citizen of full or partial Italian ancestry. It is estimated up to 25 million Argentines have some degree of Italian descent (up to 60 % of the total population)[1]. Italians began arriving to Argentina in great numbers in the 1870s, and this migratory flow continued to the 1960s.
Italian settlement in Argentina, along with Spanish settlement, formed the backbone of today's Argentine society. Argentine culture has significant connections to Italian culture, also in terms of language, customs and traditions[2].
History
Main article: Immigration to Argentina
Italian immigration to Argentina began in the nineteenth century, just after Argentina won its independence from Spain. There are many reasons explaining the Italian immigration to Argentina: Italy was enduring economic problems caused mainly by the unification of the Italian states into one nation. The country was impoverished, unemployment was rampant, certain areas witnessed overpopulation, and Italy was subject to significant political turmoil. Italians saw in Argentina a chance to build for themselves a brand new life.
The Argentine government wanted to populate the new lands they acquired from the wars, such as the Conquest of the Desert and War of the Triple Alliance, to legitimize Argentine claims on those lands from the neighbouring nations. Argentina required a labour force for its growing industrial and agricultural economy. The Argentine government welcomed the immigrants for racial reasons, because many Argentine politicians considered the Indigenous and the Mestizo to be inferior and could not be trusted[3]. These politicians also believed that Argentina should be a White nation, so following 19th century positivist ideas, the Argentine government encouraged and promoted European immigration.
Settlement
Buenos Aires Docklands
It is estimated that more than 20 million Argentines have at least one Italian forefather.
The original Italian settlers came from Northern Italy. Until 1894 most immigrants arrived principally from Piedmont, Lombardy and Liguria. Many settlers from North Italy established towns in the Pampean region of the provinces of Santa Fe and C?rdoba, as well as in the province of Mendoza. They also constituted the main population in the foundation of Resistencia, that then would be the capital of Chaco. After 1894, the afflux of Italians was mainly from Southern Italy, especially from Campania, Sicily and Calabria.
Italians became firmly established throughout Argentina, but the greatest concentrations are in the Province and the City of Buenos Aires, the Province of Santa Fe, the Province of Entre Rios, the Province of C?rdoba, the Province of Tucum?n, the Province of La Pampa and, in the nearby country of Uruguay.
The Italian population in Argentina is the second largest in the world, by numbers, outside of Italy (after Brazil)[4]. By concentration, along with Uruguay, it is the highest outside of Italy[5].
Italian historian, Marcello De Cecco has specified:
"Italians, as it is known, were a people of emigrants. For many centuries, they spread out into the four corners of the world. Nevertheless only in two countries, they constitute the majority of the population: in Italy and in Argentina..."
?Marcello De Cecco (La Repubblica d'Italia), [6]
Censual Results
Italian population in Argentina
Year Foreign population Italian population % Italians over foreigners % Italians over total population
1869 210,330 71,403 33.9 3.8
1895 1,006,838 492,636 48.9 12.2
1914 2,391,171 942,209 39.4 11.9
1947 2,435,927 786,207 32.3 4.9
1960 2,604,447 878,298 33.7 4.4
1970 2,210,400 637,050 28.8 2.7
Causes of Immigration
Italian immigrants
Immigrants Hotel in the port of Buenos Aires currently immigration museum
The cause of Italian people emigration towards the Argentina were diverse:
* The weak capacity of adjustment of the Italian economy to the industrial revolution. The modernization did not manage to overcome structural problems of organization.
* The crises of subsistence between 1816 and 1817.
* The epidemics of cholera in the following periods: 1835-37; 1854-55; 1865-67; 1884-85.
* The downswing of the welfare organs.
* The monetary penuries arisen from the high tax rates and the usury. It was necessary that departs from the family was emigrating to obtain external earnings that were allowing to overcome the above mentioned penuries. It is because of it that many immigrants were sending part of their income to the family that had stayed in Italy to be able to raise the mortgages that were weighing on their lands.
* The complex adjustment of the craftsmen to the industrial process. Before the inability to compete with the industry, they emigrate to support the form of production in still not developed countries that were valuing the "art". Many people were cobblers, tailors, leather workers, who were overcome by the industrial production.
* The consequences of World War I and World War II
Italian influences
Homage to the Immigrant, in Rosario, Argentina.
Language
According to Ethnologue, Argentina has more than 1,500,000 Italian speakers; this tongue is the second most spoken language in the nation.[7]
In spite of the great many Italian immigrants, the Italian language never truly took hold in Argentina, in part because at the time the great majority of Italians spoke only their local Italian dialect and not the unified, standard Italian. This prevented any expansion of the use of the Italian language as a primary language in Argentina. The similarity of the Italian dialects with Spanish also enabled the immigrants to assimilate, by using the Spanish language, with relative ease.
[edit] Rioplatense Spanish
See also: Rioplatense Spanish
Italian immigration from the second half of the 19th century to the beginning of the 20th century made a lasting and significant impact on the intonation of Argentina's vernacular Spanish. Preliminary research has shown that Rioplatense Spanish, and particularly the speech of the city of Buenos Aires, has intonation patterns that resemble those of Italian dialects, and differ markedly from the patterns of other forms of Spanish.[8] This correlates well with immigration patterns as Argentina, and particularly Buenos Aires, had huge numbers of Italian settlers since the 19th century.
According to a study conducted by National Scientific and Technical Research Council of Argentina, and published in Bilingualism: Language and Cognition (ISSN 1366-7289) [9] The researchers note that this is relatively recent phenomenon, starting in the beginning of the 20th century with the main wave of Southern Italian immigration. Before that, the porte?o accent was more similar to that of Spain, especially Andalusia.[10]
Lunfardo
Main article: Lunfardo
Italian immigrants reunion in the barrio of La Boca
Copy of a colonization contract in a history museum in the province of Entre R?os
Much of Lunfardo arrived with European immigrants, such as Italians, Spanish, Greek, Portuguese, and Poles. It should be noted that most Italian and Spanish immigrants spoke their regional languages and dialects and not standard Italian or Spanish; other words arrived from the pampa by means of the gauchos; a small number originated in Argentina's native population.
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". 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.
Tango lyrics use lunfardo sparsely, but some songs (such as El Ciruja, or most lyrics by Celedonio Flores) employ lunfardo heavily. "Milonga Lunfarda" by Edmundo Rivero is an instructive and entertaining primer on lunfardo usage. Examples
* Parla - To speak (from the Italian parlare -to speak-)
* Manyar - To know / to eat (from the Italian mangiare -to eat-)
* Mina - Female (from the Italian femmina -Female-)
* Morfar - To eat (from French argot morfer -to eat-)
* Laburar - To work (from Italian lavorare - to work-)
* Algo voy a cerebrar - I'll think something up (cerebrar from Spanish cerebro -brains-)
* Chochamu - Young man (vesre for muchacho)
* Gur - Boy (from Guaran -boy-) Feminine: gurisa - girl. Plural: gurises - kids
* Garpar - to pay with money (vesre for "pagar" which means to pay)
* Gom?as - Friends (vesre for amigos)
* Trucho - False/Fake/Not Real
* Fiaca - laziness (from the Italian fiacco -weak-)
* Engrupir - To fool someone (origin unknown, but also used in modern European and Brazilian Portuguese slang).
* Junar - To look to / to know (from Cal? junar -to hear-)
Cocoliche
Main article: Cocoliche
Between about 1880 and 1900, Argentina received a large number of peasants who arrived with little or no schooling in the Spanish language. As those immigrants strove to communicate with the local criollos, they produced a variable mixture of Spanish with Italian and Italian dialects. This pidgin language was given the derogatory name cocoliche by the locals.
Since the children of the immigrants grew up speaking Spanish at school, work, and military service, Cocoliche remained confined mostly to the first generation immigrants, and slowly fell out of use. The pidgin has been depicted humorously in literary works and in the Argentine sainete theater, e.g. by Dario Vittori.
For original text with references see: "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Italian_Argentine"
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