Rioplatense Spanish

Rioplatense Spanish (castellano rioplatense) is a dialect of the Spanish language which is mainly spoken in the areas in and around the Río de la Plata basin, in Argentina and Uruguay.

Linguistic features

Phonology

Rioplatense Spanish distinguishes itself from other varieties of Spanish by the pronunciation of certain consonants.

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• Like many other dialects, Rioplatense features yeísmo: the sounds represented by ll (the palatal lateral {{IPA|/ʎ/}}) and y (historically the palatal approximant {{IPA|/j/}}) have fused into one. This merged phoneme is generally pronounced as a postalveolar fricative, either voiceless {{IPA|}} or voiced {{IPA|}} (these are the sounds in English mission and measure, or the French ch and j, respectively). That is, in Rioplatense, se cayó "he fell down" is homophonous with se calló "he became silent".
• The fricatives {{IPA|/s/}} and sometimes {{IPA|/f/}} and {{IPA|/x/}} have a tendency to become an indistinct aspiration (a voiceless glottal fricative, {{IPA|/h/}}), or to disappear altogether, at the end of syllables. This change may be realized only at the word level or it may also cross word boundaries. That is, las mesas son blancas "the tables are white" is pronounced {{IPA|}}, but in las águilas azules "the blue eagles", syllable-final {{IPA|/s/}} in las and águilas might experience liaison with the initial vowels of the following words and remain {{IPA|}} ({{IPA|/la'sagila sa'sulɛh/}}), or become {{IPA|}} (the exact pronunciation is largely an individual choice).
• In some areas, speakers tend to drop the final r sound in verb infinitives. This elision is considered a feature of uneducated speakers in some places, but it is widespread in others, at least in rapid speech.

Aspiration or elision of fricatives, together with loss of final r and some common instances of diphthong simplification, tend to produce a noticeable simplification of the syllable structure, giving Rioplatense a distinct fluid consonant-vowel-consonant-vowel rhythm:

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:Si querés irte, andáte. Yo no te voy a parar.

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:"If you want to go then go. I'm not gonna stop you."

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:{{IPA|/sikeˌɾɛˈhite anˈdate - ʃo noteβjapaˈɾa/}}

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Intonation

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 Argentine dialects of Spanish. http://www.unidadenladiversidad.com/actualidad/actualidad_ant/2004/mayo_2004/actualidad_050504_01.htm

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Pronouns and verb conjugation

One of the features of the Argentine and Uruguayan speaking style is the voseo: the usage of the pronoun vos for the second person singular, instead of tú. Voseo is found also in other places around the Spanish-speaking community. Vos is used with forms of the verb that resemble those of the second person plural in traditional (Spain's) Castilian Spanish.

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The second person plural pronoun, which is vosotros in Spain, is replaced with ustedes. While usted is the formal second person singular pronoun, its plural ustedes has a neutral connotation and can be used to address friends and acquaintances as well as in more formal occasions (see T-V distinction). Ustedes takes a grammatically third person plural verb.

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As an example, see the conjugation table for the verb amar in the present tense, indicative mode:

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:(¹) Tú amás is only used in Uruguay. In formal speech, usted ama.

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:(²) Ustedes is common to all Latin America.

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Although apparently there is just a stress shift (from amas to amás), the origin of such a stress is the loss of the diphthong of the ancient vos inflection from vos amáis to vos amás. This can be better seen with the verb "to be": from vos sois to vos sos. In vowel-alternating verbs like perder and morir, the stress shift also triggers a change of the vowel in the root:

Related Topics:
Vowel-alternating verbs - Root

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For the -ir verbs, the Castilian vosotros forms end in -ís, so there is no diphthong to simplify, and Rioplatense vos employs the same form: instead of tú vives, vos vivís; instead of tú vienes, tú venís (note the alternation).

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The imperative forms for vos are identical to the plural imperative forms in Castilian minus the final -d (stress remains the same):

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• Hablá más alto, por favor. "Speak louder, please." (hablad in Castilian)
• Comé un poco de torta. "Eat some cake." (comed in Castilian)
• Vení para acá. "Come over here." (venid in Castilian)

The plural imperative uses the ustedes form (i. e. the third person plural subjunctive, as corresponding to ellos).

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As for the subjunctive forms of vos verbs, while they tend to be unchanged, some speakers do perform a similar change as seen in the indicative, employing the vosotros form minus the i in the final diphthong. In the third conjugation (-ir verbs), the stress does not shift, so the result is identical for the Rioplatense speaker. Many consider only the unchanged subjunctive forms to be correct.

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• Espero que veas or Espero que veás "I hope you can see" (Castilian veáis)
• Lo que quieras or Lo que querás "Whatever you want" (Castilian queráis)
• Si salieras "If you went out" (Castilian salierais)

In the preterite tense, an s is often added, for instance (vos) perdistes. This corresponds to the Spanish form vosotros perdisteis. However, it is commonly deemed incorrect.

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Other verb forms do not change (the vos forms employ the same conjugation as tú).

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Usage

In the old times, vos was used as a respectful term (as it still appears in Catholic liturgy to address the deity). In Rioplatense, as in most other dialects which employ voseo, this pronoun has become informal. It is used especially for addressing friends and family members (regardless of age), but may also include most acquaintances, such as coworkers, friends of one's friends, etc.

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Usage of tenses

Although literary works use the full spectrum of verb inflections, in Rioplatense (as well as many other Spanish dialects), the future tense has been replaced by a verbal phrase (periphrasis) in the spoken language.

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This verb phrase is formed by the verb ir ("go") followed by the preposition a and the main verb in the infinitive. This is akin to the English phrase going to + infinitive verb. For example:

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• Creo que descansaré un poco → Creo que voy a descansar un poco
• Mañana visitará a mi madre → Mañana va a visitar a mi madre

The Rioplatense speaker rarely uses the perfect past tense (choosing simple past over it), so past tense phrases rarely are of the form Alguna vez he ido a comer a ese restaurante. The form Alguna vez fui a comer a ese restaurante would be chosen, or even without periphrasis: Alguna vez comí en ese restaurante.

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