How to understand Argentineans

Discover how to understand Argentineans and where their own language originates.

Argentina’s own language

National culture, ser nacional (national being), cultura rioplatense, cultura gauchesca, cultura criolla (creole culture). In Argentina the word creole often has a different connotation than in the rest of Latin America.

While in most countries the word is used to refer to the offspring of Europeans born in the Americas, in Argentina it generally connotes a person of mixed origins, European (mainly Spanish) and Native American.

Many people use it as a synonym for gaucho (Argentine cowboys) and mestizo. It is also known as cultura rioplatense (River Plate culture). This is a more inclusive concept, as it refers to the culture of Uruguayans and Argentines inhabiting the River Plate Basin region. Official conservative interpretations of the Argentine culture have often emphasized the Spanish and Catholic heritage, rooted in the early contributions made by Queen Isabel of Castille and Ferdinand of Aragon, artifices of the conquest of the Americas in the late fifteenth and early sixteenth century.

Argentine Tango – Buenos Aires typical instrument, the Bandoneon

How to understand Argentineans, Che

Latin Americans often identify Argentines as ” Ches,” a colloquial form of address for the second person, similar to the American “hey, you.” This is the reason Ernesto Guevara, the Argentine-born commander of the Cuban Revolution, was called ” el Che.”