The city of Tango

Argentine culture has been primarily informed and influenced by its European roots. Buenos Aires is undeniably the most European city in South America and considered by many its cultural capital, due both to the prevalence of people of Italian, Spanish and German descent and to conscious imitation.

Argentina has a rich history of world renowned literature, including one of 20th century most critically acclaimed writers, Jorge Luis Borges.

Argentine cinema has achieved international recognition with films such as "The Official Story", "Nine Queens" or "Iluminados por el Fuego", though it has only rarely been taken into account by mainstream popular viewers who prefer Hollywood-type movies. Even low-budget productions, however, have obtained prizes in cinema festivals (such as Cannes). The city of Mar del Plata organizes its own festival dedicated to this art.

The best-known elements of Argentine culture are probably music and dance, particularly tango. In modern Argentina, tango music is enjoyed in its own right, especially since the radical Astor Piazzolla redefined the music of Carlos Gardel. It must be noted that, to foreigners, tango refers mostly to a particular dancing music, but the music together with the lyrics (often sung in a kind of slang called lunfardo) are what most Argentines primarily mean by tango. Tango lyrics can be considered a kind of poetry. Since the 1970s rock and roll is also widely appreciated in Argentina. First during the 1970s and then again at the mid 1980s and the beginning of the 1990s, national rock and roll and pop music experienced bursts of popularity, with many new bands (such as Soda Stereo and Sumo) and composers (like Charly García and Fito Páez) becoming important referents of national culture. Buenos Aires is also considered the techno/electronica country in Latin America, that started with little raves, and nowadays is home of important events such as Creamfields (which has the world record of 65,000 people), South American Music Conference and many more. Now, the Argentine rock is the most listened music among youth.

European classical music is well-considered in Argentina, with the Colón Theater one of the best opera houses in the world. Classical musicians such as Martha Argerich and Daniel Barenboim; and classical composers like Alberto Ginastera have become internationally famous.

Argentine food consists of many different kinds of European food from Spain, Italy, Germany, France and other European countries. Argentina has a wide variety of typical foods (Spanish: Comidas típicas), which include: Empanadas, a stuffed pastry; Locro, a mixture of corn, beans, meat, bacon, onion, and gourd; and Chorizo, a meat-based spicy sausage. The Argentine barbecue (Spanish: Asado argentino) is one of the most famous in the world including various types of meats, among them the chorizo, mollejas, chinchulín, and the morcilla.

The Argentina´s language

The only official language of Argentina is Spanish, however, the Amerindian language Guaraní also holds official status in the province of Corrientes. Some immigrants and indigenous communities have retained their original languages in specific points of the country. There are, for example, many Welsh-speaking towns in Patagonia and German-speaking cities in Córdoba, Buenos Aires and again in Patagonia. Italian, English and French are widely spoken, and other languages such as Japanese, Chinese, Korean and Russian are easily found in Buenos Aires, where the main foreign communities established their barrios.

Argentina is the largest Spanish-speaking community in the world that employs voseo (the use of the pronoun vos instead of tú, associated with some alternate verb conjugations). The most prevalent dialect is Rioplatense, with most speakers located in the basin of the Río de la Plata. The Rioplatense accent is considerably different from all other forms of Spanish.

A phonetic study conducted by the Laboratory for Sensory Investigations of CONICET and the University of Toronto showed that the accent of the inhabitants of Buenos Aires (known locally as Porteños) is closer to the Napolitano Italian dialect than any other spoken language. According to the study, this can be traced to the influx of Italian immigrants through the port city during the late 1800's and early 1900's. The Italian immigration had a profound influence on Lunfardo, the slang spoken in Buenos Aires and the Río de la Plata, which has since permeated popular vocabulary in the region.

This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article Argentina