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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.
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 recognised 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 world.
Nowadays in Argentina, unless referring to tango, Lunfardo means non-standard use of words, use (or misuse) of foreign words, and creation of new ones. It closely resembles the English language concept of slang.
Development
Many of the expressions arrived with European immigrants, such as Italians, French, Portuguese, and Poles; other words arrived from the pampa by means of the gauchos; yet others emerged from Argentina's black population.
Some sources believe that it originated in jails, as a mean used by the prisioners to talk freely without being understood by the jailers, as it's based mostly on using words with a different meaning. Also, some words come from wordplay like the vesre (reversing the syllables). Tango becomes gotan and café con leche ("white coffee" lit: coffee with milk) becomes feca con chele. Others are ingenious comparisions like el bobo ("the dumb") for the heart, because "it works all day long without being paid", or bufoso ("snorter") when referring to a pistol, etc.
Finally, there are words that are simply hard to know where they came from, such as abaragar (doesn't have a meaning, even in Spanish), which means to stop your opponent's blows with the blade of your knife.
Examples
- Esa ave negra la tengo manyada (I know that Lawyer Lit: I have eaten that black bird. Manyar comes from Italian language's mangiare -to eat-)
- Quería darme un cañazo y terminé con Maria Muñeca (I wanted to have sex and ended up masturbating Lit: I wanted to hit me with a cane and ended up with Mary Wrist)
- Algo voy a cerebrar (I'll think something up Lit: I'm going to brain something)
- "Chochamu" (Muchacho)
- "Gomías" (Amigos)
See also
- Cocoliche, a Buenos-Aires pidgin of Spanish and Italian
- Germanía
- Jeringozo, a wordplay done by children in Argentina
- Verlan, a French wordplay similar to Vesre
- Vesre, a common reversing syllables wordplay found in lunfardo
External links
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