Argentina Culture & Language

Argentina’s culture was formed by mass immigration: Italian influence in particular runs through the food, the surnames and the accent, which is why Argentine Spanish sounds unlike any other.

Tango began in the working-class ports of Buenos Aires and Montevideo and is UNESCO-listed. It is danced socially in milongas rather than performed for audiences, and the dinner shows aimed at visitors are a separate thing.

Beef and the asado are genuinely central — a long, slow, social grill rather than a barbecue — and the cuts and the ritual are taken seriously. Mate, a shared herbal infusion passed around a group, is drunk constantly and has its own etiquette.

Buenos Aires has more psychoanalysts per head than anywhere on earth, a bookshop culture to match, and a European self-image that Argentines discuss with some irony.

Spanish is the language, but Argentine Spanish is distinctive: vos replaces tú with its own verb forms, the double-l and y sound like the s in measure, and the intonation is audibly Italian.

English is reasonably common in Buenos Aires and in tourism and limited elsewhere.

Buen día, por favor, gracias and ¿cuánto sale? — the local phrasing rather than cuánto cuesta — will be understood everywhere and noticed favourably.