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Lunfardo (Spanish pronunciation:[luɱˈfaɾðo]; from the Italianlombardo[1] or inhabitant ofLombardy,lumbard inLombard) is anargot originated and developed in the late 19th and early 20th centuries in the lower classes in theRío de la Plata region (encompassing the port cities ofBuenos Aires andMontevideo) and from there spread to other urban areas nearby, such as theGreater Buenos Aires,Santa Fe andRosario.[2][3]
Lunfardo originated from the mixture of languages and dialects produced due to the massiveEuropean immigration, mainly Italian and Spanish, which arrived in the ports of the region since the end of the 19th century.[4] It was originally a slang used by criminals and soon by other people of the lower and lower-middle classes. Later, many of its words and phrases were introduced in the vernacular and disseminated in theSpanish ofArgentina, andUruguay. Nevertheless, since the early 20th century, Lunfardo has spread among all social strata and classes by habitual use or because it was common in the lyrics oftango.
Today, the meaning of the termlunfardo has been extended to designate anyslang orjargon used in Buenos Aires.[5]
Lunfardo (orlunfa for short) began as prison slang in the late 19th century so guards would not understand prisoners. According to Oscar Conde, the word came from "lumbardo" (the inhabitants of the regionLombardia inItaly, the origin of most[citation needed] of the Italians in Argentina in the early 20th century).[6] However, the vernacular Spanish of mid-19th century Buenos Aires as preserved in the dialogue ofEsteban Echeverría's short storyThe Slaughter Yard (El matadero) is already a prototype of Lunfardo.[7][original research?]
Most sources believe that Lunfardo originated among criminals, and later became more commonly used by other classes. Circa 1870, the wordlunfardo itself (originally a deformation oflombardo in several Italian dialects) was often used to mean "outlaw".[8]
Today, many Lunfardo terms have entered the language spoken all over Argentina and Uruguay, although a great number of Lunfardo words have fallen into disuse or have been modified in the era ofsuburbanization. Furthermore, the term "Lunfardo" has become synonymous with "speech of Buenos Aires" or "Porteño", mainly of the inhabitants of theCity of Buenos Aires, as well as its surrounding areas,Greater Buenos Aires. The Montevideo speech has almost as much "Lunfardo slang" as the Buenos Aires speech. Conde says that Lunfardo (much likeCocoliche) can be considered a kind of Italian dialect mixed with Spanish words, specifically the one spoken inMontevideo. In other words, Lunfardo is aninterlanguage variety of the Italian dialects spoken by immigrants in the areas of Buenos Aires and Montevideo.[citation needed]
InArgentina, anyneologism that reached a minimum level of acceptance is considered, by default, a Lunfardo term. The original slang has been immortalized in numeroustango lyrics.[citation needed]
Conde takes the view that the Lunfardo is not so much a dialect but a kind of local language of the Italian immigrants, mixed with Spanish and some French words.[9] He believes that Lunfardo is not a criminal slang, since most Lunfardo words are not related to crime.[10]
According to Conde, Lunfardo
...is a vernacular, or to put it more clearly, is a vocabulary of popular speech in Buenos Aires that spread first throughout the entire River Plate area and later to the whole country... The use of this lexicon reminds speakers of their identity but also of their roots... Lunfardo is possibly the only argot that was originally formed, and in great measure, from Italian immigrant terms.
[Es un modo de expresión popular o, para decirlo más claramente, un vocabulario del habla popular de Buenos Aires… que se ha extendido primero a toda la región del Río de la Plata y luego al país entero… el uso de este léxico les recuerda a sus usuarios quiénes son, pero también de dónde vienen… el lunfardo es posiblemente el único que en su origen se formó, y en un alto porcentaje, con términos italianos inmigrados].[11]
Lunfardo words are inserted in the normal flow ofRioplatense Spanish sentences, but grammar and pronunciation do not change. Thus, an average Spanish-speaking person reading tango lyrics will need, at most, the translation of a discrete set of words.
Tango lyrics use Lunfardo sparsely, but some songs (such as "El Ciruja"—Lunfardo for "The Hobo" or "The Bum"—or most lyrics by Celedonio Flores) employ Lunfardo heavily. "Milonga Lunfarda" byEdmundo Rivero is an instructive and entertaining primer on Lunfardo usage.
A characteristic of Lunfardo is its use ofword play, notablyvesre (from "[al] revés"), reversing the syllables, similar to Englishback slang, Frenchverlan, Serbo-CroatianŠatrovački or GreekPodaná. Thus,tango becomesgotán andcafé (coffee) becomesfeca.
Lunfardo employs metaphors such asbobo ("dumb") for theheart, who "works all day long without being paid" orbufoso ("snorter") forpistol.
Finally, there are words that are derived from others in Spanish, such as the verbabarajar, which means to stop a situation or a person (such asto stop your opponent's blows with the blade of your knife) and is related to the verb "barajar", which means to cut or shuffle a deck of cards.
Since the 1970s, it is a matter of debate whether newer additions to the slang of Buenos Aires qualify as lunfardo. Traditionalists argue that lunfardomust have a link to the argot of the old underworld, to tango lyrics, or to racetrack slang. Others maintain that the colloquial language of Buenos Aires is lunfardo by definition.
Some examples of modern talk:
Many new terms had spread from specific areas of the dynamic Buenos Aires cultural scene: invented by screenwriters, used around the arts-and-crafts fair in Plaza Francia, culled from the vocabulary ofpsychoanalysis.
Lunfardo was influenced byCocoliche, apidgin ofItalian immigrants.[16] Many Cocoliche words were transferred to Lunfardo in the first half of the 20th century. For example:
Some Italian linguists,[19] because of the Cocoliche influences, argue that the Lunfardo can be considered apidgin of theItalian language.
A rarer feature of Porteño speech that can make it completely unintelligible is the random addition of suffixes with no particular meaning, usually making common words sound reminiscent of Italian surnames, for no particular reason, but playful language. These endings include -etti, -ellieli, -oni, -eni, -anga, -ango, -enga, -engue, -engo, -ingui, -ongo, -usi, -ula, -usa, -eta, among others. Examples:milanesa (meat dish)milanga, cuaderno ("notebook")cuadernelli, etc.
