The l unfardo consists of a slang -or modality of the language- used mainly in the Argentine city of Buenos Aires, although its use has also been recorded in other adjacent cities, such as Rosario and Montevideo (Uruguay).
Likewise, this jargon has been defined as a “popular speech”, whose words cannot be found in Spanish-language dictionaries; This means that the lunfardo within its structure does not include cultisms or other more refined terms.
The author María Helena Sarabia, in her text El lunfardo: un slang that raised its linguistic level, established that lunfardo was born in the port areas of the 19th century thanks to contact with Italian dialects and other slang from the immigrant population.
For this reason, lunfardo is a combined slang that is made up of words from standard Italian, as well as from the popular dialects of other immigrants and from the Spanish used in Argentina.
The lunfardo has been classified as "the speech of the underworld", due to its status as a marginal language. However, this jargon has become notoriously widespread, so it can be heard in all sectors and levels of Argentine society, becoming for many a source of national pride.
Origin
Italian immigration
In 1855, the Buenos Aires society had an immigrant population of 36%, where Italians comprised up to 11%; These were scattered throughout all the neighborhoods of the city and were dedicated to economic areas, to which they adapted easily.
The Italians who arrived in Argentina came mainly from the northwestern part of the Italian peninsula: Piedmont, Liguria and Lombardy; this last area gave the name to the slang, since the word "lunfa" comes from the Lombard language - spoken in northern Italy - and means "thief".
Other theories establish that migrants from Lombardy were considered criminals, since their society was made up of bankers and moneylenders. Because of this, lunfardo is also considered "the tongue of thieves."
Morphological characteristics
The lexicon of this jargon is influenced by another linguistic modality known as "Cocoliche", which consisted of the first jargon that was used when the different languages met and mixed in Argentine ports.
Later, the cocoliche was discontinued to give way to its simplest form: the lunfardo.
A characteristic of lunfardo is that it cannot properly be considered as a language, since a language must contain all the elements of a sentence. For its part, the lunfardo has a verb, noun and adjective, but does not contain pronouns, articles, prepositions, among others.
Examples of words
Here are some words from the Lunfardo lexicon:
Biaba
It means "beating" and comes from Italian. In turn, this word was used to refer to the food of farm animals.
Look
It comes from the Italian "faccia" and means "face".
Laburo
It is one of the most common words in lunfardo. It comes from the Italian "lavoro" and means "work".
Kid
It comes from the Genoese "pivetto" and is used to refer to a young person or a child.
References
- Casas, J. (1991) Some Italianisms in lunfardo. Retrieved on September 19, 2019 from Contrastiva: contrastiva.it
- González, D. (2016) An approach to the metaphorical bases of lunfardo. Retrieved on September 19, 2019 from virtual Cervantes: cervantesvirtual.com
- Grayson, J. (1964) Lunfardo, Argentina's unknown tongue. Retrieved on September 19, 2019 from JSTOR: jstor.org
- Lorenzino, G. (2014) Immigrant's languages, lunfardo and lexical diffusion in popular porteño spanish. Retrieved on September 19, 2019 from PAPIA, Brazilian Journal of Studies: magazines.fflch.usp.br
- Lorenzino, G. (2016) The lunfardo in the evolution of Argentine Spanish. Retrieved on September 19, 2019 from Scielo: scielo.conicyt.cl
- Mitchell, L. (2016) The origins of Lunfardo: A Quantitative analysis of the lexicon. Retrieved on September 19, 2019 from Open Scholar Ship: openscholarship.wustl.edu
- SA (sf) Lunfardo. Retrieved on September 19, 2019 from Wikipedia: es.wikipedia.org