Languages of Argentina

Languages of Argentina
Sign in San Francisco, Córdoba in Spanish, Italian and Piedmontese
Official	de facto Spanish
Indigenous	Tupi-Guarani languages, Mataco–Guaicuru languages, Mapuche, Chaná, Quechua[1]
Vernacular	Rioplatense Spanish, Lunfardo, Portuñol
Minority	Italian, English, German, Plautdietsch, Chinese, Welsh
Foreign	English
Signed	Argentine Sign Language
Keyboard layout	Spanish Latinamerican QWERTY

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Spanish is the language that is predominantly understood and spoken as a first or second language by nearly all of the population of Argentina. According to the latest estimations, the population is currently greater than 45 million.^[2]

English is another important language in Argentina and is obligatory in primary school instruction in various provinces. Argentina is the only Latin American country characterized as "high aptitude" in English, being placed 15th globally in the year 2015, according to a report from the English Aptitude Index.^[3][4] In 2017, Argentina fell ten places from its best position and fell to 25th place, though it continues to be the second highest ranked Ibero-American, after Portugal.^[5]

Guarani and Quechua are other important languages in Argentina with 200,000 speakers and 65,000 speakers respectively.^[6]

Fifteen Indigenous American languages^[6] currently exist and five others (today extinct) existed in different regions. The vernacular Indigenous American languages (native to the Argentine territory) are spoken by very few people. In addition there is Lunfardo, a slang or a type of pidgin with original words from many languages, among these languages are ones from the Italian Peninsula, like Piedmontese, Ligurian, and others like Italian, Portuguese, etc., and have been seen in the Río de la Plata area since at least 1880. There is also Portuñol, a pidgin of Portuguese and Spanish spoken since approximately 1960 in the areas of Argentina that border Brazil.

Another native language is Argentine Sign Language (LSA), which is signed by deaf communities. It emerged in 1885.

After the above-mentioned languages German follows (around 200,000, including a significant number of the Volga German dialect and of the Plautdietsch language). Multitude of Eurasian and immigrant languages are spoken in their respective ethnic communities throughout the country; these are namely Albanian, Arabic, Armenian, Asturian, Basque, Belarusian, Bosnian, Bulgarian, Catalan, Chinese, Croatian, Czech, Danish, Dutch, Estonian, Finnish, French, Galician, Greek, Hebrew, Hungarian, Irish, Japanese, Korean, Latvian, Lithuanian, Macedonian, Norwegian, Occitan, Polish, Portuguese, Romani, Romanian, Russian, Serbian, Slovene, Swedish, Turkish, Ukrainian, Welsh and Yiddish. Most of these languages have, with the exception of Chinese and Plautdietsch, very few speakers and are usually only spoken in family environments.