How to speak like an Argentine

Without getting into the slang (I haven't heard much in the circles I run in), here are a few phrases that might make you feel a little bit more of an insider if you talk to Argentines in Spanish. I've found a few simple differences that really give Argentine Spanish a distinct personality. Also, the pronunciation, for me, is generally quite clear and musical, sounding a bit like you'd imagine an Italian would speak Spanish.

I've incorporated a few of the following habits, but I still can't get into using the "vos" form. I continue to speak what my Spanish tutor calls "neutral Spanish" using the "tú" form. What is written in italics is the way you would hear the phrase in another Spanish speaking country.

• Dale (DA-le) = Vale = OK
• Vos = Tú = You (familiar)
• ¿Como andás? = ¿Como andas? = How's it going? (Note: all verbs in familiar singular form follow the vos conjugation, a shortened vosotros form)
• ¡Buen día! = ¡Buenos días! = Good morning (greeting used until around 2pm)
• ¿Todo bien? = Everything going OK? (Used in every situation possible)
• Todo bien = Everything's OK. (Used in all situations in which everything's OK)
• ¿Cuánto sale? = ¿Cuánto cuesta? = How much is it?
• Colectivo = bus = bus
• Castellano = Español = Spanish
• Pronunciation of all words with "ll"  is sh or zh, i.e. Servilleta (ser-vi-SHE-ta) = napkin (I've made the mistake of NOT implementing this pronunciation and everyone was completely puzzled when I asked for some napkins!)
• Chao = Adios = Bye
• Chicos = Kids (this is what they call everyone, even us! I guess it translates as to something like "guys", meaning it includes women and men)
• Eh? = In sort of an Italian-like way, this is said with rising intonation at the end of a sentence to confirm understanding. It could translate as "right?"
• Thumbs up = Everything's OK/understood
• Fingers flicked under chin outward =  I don't have the slightest idea.
• ¿Que le vamos a hacer? = What can you do?
• Kiss on the cheek = Extremely common gesture that everyone does - whether you know someone or not, you must be prepared to kiss one time on  the right cheek "hello" and "goodbye"!
• Beso = Literally means "kiss" but used to sign off at the end of a telephone conversation.

Heres the trailer of an Argentine movie called Amorosa Soledad. The lead actress has a very pronounced Argentine accent; if you listen carefully, you can hear "Todo bien?" and lots of examples of the vos conjugation. Also, she gives a good example of the Italian-sounding Spanish:

La Gente

Note: This entry is in Spanish. For your convenience, you can use the Google Website Translator Widget on the right. Have fun!

Míra . . . estamos en Argentina y hasta ahora no hemos comentado nada en español, solo unas palabras. ¡Que barbaridad! ¿No? Y por eso, yo dedico esta entrada a mis compañeros hispanohablantes y también será buena práctica para mis amigos en EEUU quienes están estudiando castellano (¡como dicen acá refiriéndose al idioma español!). El tema hoy es "la gente". No hemos hablado mucho de eso, y quiero dar todo mi respeto a la gente de Argentina que nos está tratando con mucha amabilidad.

Musicians in San Telmo Neighborhood

En primer lugar, tengo que decir que todo el mundo trata de ayudarnos y entendernos cuando hablamos español, perdón, “castellano”. Es obvio que somos de otro país . . . pero me da gusto (no sé por qué, quizás porque yo no quiero ser el esteriotipo de un norteamericano hablando "mal" español) cuando ellos no me puedan identificar de qué país soy . . . ¿Brasil, España, Alemania, Francia? Siempre y cuando no me den por una “gringa” o “yanqui”, como se llama a los de Norteamérica. Claro, soy una, pero me gusta cuando yo no sueno como tal.

No faltan oportunidades de hablar en castellano porque es verdad que a los argentinos, al menos los en Buenos Aires, les gusta hablar. Siempre me sorprende que alguien en una parada de colectivos (buses), justamente en el colectivo, en un almacén, en un restaurante, en la fila en el supermercado, es decir en todos lugares la gente quiere hablar de cualquier cosa. A veces el tema tiene que ver con mi cartera que está poca abierta y alguien quiere advertirme que hay gente quien me podría robar si yo no cuide bien mis cosas. Me parece que todos tienen actitudes muy buenas, sin agresión, con intenciones muy buenas.

Tango in Belgrano Neighborhood

También yo pienso que los Argentinos tratan bién el uno al otro. Una compañera de trabajo niega eso y me dice que los Argentinos siempre están mejor con la gente desde afuera. Puede ser, pero yo he visto otra cosa. Cuando estoy en el colectivo (un evento que ocupa mucho tiempo de la mayoría de gente, inclusive yo), nunca he visto una ocasión en que un joven no ofreció su asiento a un anciano o una chica embarazada. También en la calle, desafortunadamente, hay unas ocasiones en cuales una persona se le caiga debido a los superficies del senderos que son muy irregulares. Siempre hay alguien o grupo de personas que huyan a ayudarlo. Una vez cuando Joe y yo estuvimos esperando un una parada, había un chico ciego. El hablo con una mujer de preguntar donde paró el 29. Ella vio que yo estaba en la parada del 29, agarró el brazo del chico, lo arrastró (es decir en una buena manera) a mi lado, y puso la mano de el en mi hombro. Tuvimos una conversación, por supuesto, de donde yo fuera, etc. y después y lo ayudé a subir nuestro colectivo 29. Hablando de una experiencia auténtica . . . ¡Me sentí muy orgullosa de mí!

La Boca Neighborhood

Los celulares no son tan populares como en otros países en cuales nosotros hemos vivido. Aunque sean utilizados, aparece que la gente prefiere hablar cara a cara. He visto solo dos o tres “bluetooths” en una ciudad de 13 millones personas. La gente es expresiva, pero en mi opinión, no tan ruida. Supuestamente, Buenos Aires es la cuarta ciudad más ruidoso del mundo. A veces hay sirenas de ambulancias o de policía, y aun una fiesta para celebrar el fútbol, pero por lo general no me parece extremo. En el tiempo de ocio, les gustan ir al teatro, bailar (es verdad que hay gente común quien baila tango), ir a restaurantes (o se dicen restobar, como café), escuchar música (Placido Domingo vino por un concierto gratis recientemente), tocar música, ir de museos, y ir a mercados de artesanías (son muy artísticos y aprecian el arte).

Finalmente, quiero comentar en la dulzura que veo alrededor de nosotros. Hace poco, el año escolar empezó. Vimos todos los niños yendo a escuela con uno o dos de sus padres. Ellos se toman de la mano y caminan juntos. Y lo hacen diariamente, no solo durante la primera semana de las clases. Y tan tierno, especialmente cuando hay una niña de cómo 6 años caminando con su papá. A veces se ven casi lo mismo, el grande sin pelo, y la pequeña con trenzas largas. Y hablando del cariño, los jóvenes enamorados se besan en público, de hecho, todo el mundo se besa acá. Una vez en la mejilla derecha para saludar y cuando salgas, hombre a mujer, mujer a mujer, y hombre a hombre. Sí, es verdad, son muy cálidos el uno al otro. ¡Es algo que tuvimos que aprender de hacer con fluidez!

En resumen, cada día me impresiona mas la consideración y cortesía que la gente nos ofrece acá. Es algo especial que hemos encontrado en Buenos Aires.

Chivito!

Even though we are in Argentina for an "official" purpose, we are both here on tourist visas, the only visa available to us, apparently. These visas allow us 90 days, after which time we have to leave the country. This state of affairs leads to us having to do a "visa run" every three months - leave Argentina briefly, then return with a fresh 90 days. There are a lot of people living in Buenos Aires faced with this same situation, and most of them choose the quickest and cheapest solution: the fast boat to Colonia, across the mighty Rio de la Plata, in Uruguay. We did our first "run" last week - our first visit to Argentina's placid, almost forgotten neighbor, Uruguay.

Calle de los Suspiros (Street of Sighs)

The boat trip is pretty painless, taking about an hour each way and costing about 40 bucks roundtrip. The river (more properly, estuary) is created by the confluence of the Rio Parana and the Rio Uruguay, and by the time it meets the South Atlantic at Buenos Aires it is more or less an ocean of brownish chop (brown from its draining a large chunk of South America). Not too appetizing really - I was neither drawn to swimming nor fishing in it! Anyway, an hour after leaving the teeming urban jungle of Buenos Aires, we arrived in Colonia - a small colonial outpost and UNESCO heritage site, known for its well-preserved 17th century buildings and even older ruins.

Colonia is pretty quiet. When we got there at 9:30, it seemed like we were the only people in town. We walked to the barrio historico (Old Town) and just wandered around for an hour or two. No cars, no people, just a few sleepy dogs, a couple of which we roused from slumber and who then decided to follow us around. We had made a reservation to spend the night and return to BA the follwing afternoon, but by noon it seemed as if we had seen the entire place. How were we gonna kill another 30 hours in this burg? It was picturesque, no doubt, but I started to regret not taking the afternoon boat home to BA. That's when we discovered the chivito.

Chivito!

The chivito is Uruguay's gift to the culinary world: a big-ass sandwich (also available as a plato, topping a pile of french fries) consisting of a thin steak, ham, cheese, bacon, and a fried egg, along with lettuce, tomato, and a number of other random add-ons. On day one we split a chivito platter, all the aforementioned goodies served on a bed of crispy fries. It was delicious and plenty for two people. On day two we sussed out a mobile chivito cart on a side street and ordered the classic sandwich. The old guy manning the grill took obvious pride in his product and offered us a selection of extras to put on our chivito. We opted for garlic mayonnaise, mushrooms, pickled red peppers, and spicy green peppers. It was huge (how could one person eat this thing?), delicious, and more than worth the 5 bucks it cost. Riquissimo!

Anyway, Colonia kind of grew on us, and we were able to spend our two days there enjoyably. We took a lot of photos, wandered about, and made observations: Cars make a point of stopping for pedestrians in Colonia - unlike BA where drivers will run you down in the crosswalks. People seemed more conservative and less likely to smile or joke around...was it a small-town thing? a tourist-town thing? a Uruguayan thing? It's not particularly cheap in Colonia - it thrives on tourism, especially hordes of Argentinian day-trippers, and there a lot of tourist traps, especially in the barrio historico. It pays to poke around and find the good deals (Jen bought a beautiful scarf). BTW, you'll get horribly short-changed if you bring Argentine pesos - dollars or Euros are a much better bet on the exchange.

We made it back to home sweet Buenos Aires on Thursday evening in a pouring rainstorm and had to find our way home from the waterfront. Forget finding a taxi in those conditions - we took two busses, and the rain had stopped by the time we got to our apartment. We were wet and tired and glad to be home. The next time we do a visa run, maybe we'll take a few days to explore Montevideo, Uruguay's capital, or the lovely beaches up the coast. Or maybe we'll just take the morning boat to Colonia and the afternoon boat back - now that's a visa run!

9 1/2 Weeks

We've been in Buenos Aires for two months plus (catchy Reagan-era title, huh?), and I figured it might be a good time to make a random list of impressions and observations about our surroundings. A number of these topics deserve more attention and will undoubtedly be the subject of more in-depth examinations at some later date. In no particular order of importance:

Cursos de CLOWN

• There seems to be an urban baby-boom occuring. Every other woman between twenty and forty is either pregnant or pushing a stroller, often both - and this in the center of the city, not the suburbs.
• Don't order vegetables in a restaurant. All of our worst food experiences have been veggie-related. You may get a fairly fresh bowl of lettuce, tomato, and carrot w/ oil & vinegar, but do not ask them to cook the vegetables. We once ordered what turned out to be two heaping plates of overcooked carrots...shudder.
• The weather is great. Admittedly, we came in mid-summer and it's now early autumn, but bright blue skies (not grey or brown like so many big cities) have been the rule. It's rained on three occasions.
• People chew their fingernails while walking down the street. Odd.
• Schoolchildren wear long white coats to school. There's a story behind it - I think Jen knows it.
• When you buy eggs, they wrap them in newsprint, a half-dozen at a time. Delicious, by the way.
• Women here wear their hair long and straight. How men wear their hair will be the subject of a photo-essay someday, God willing.
• There are tons of bookstores and newsstands everywhere. In every cafe and restaurant, there are a selection of newspapers that people read and then leave for the next person to peruse. Quite civilized, I think.
• We saw Placido Domingo last week giving a free concert in the streets of Buenos Aires. At 70 years old, dude can sing.
• I've read that people in Buenos Aires are neat fastidious about their dress. Uh, how should I say this?...uh, not so much.
• Cursos de clown, or classes in the clowning arts, are offered nearby. We have seen clowns on stilts, clowning in our neighborhood.
• Many women wear shoes that make it look like they have cloven hooves. Not a good look under any circumstances, but quite popular. Gotta get a photo!
• Ice cream is incredibly popular with everyone. People eat it constantly, you can buy it by the kilo, and every ice cream shop (heladeria) will deliver to your home. I allow myself one cone a week, but I could eat the stuff everyday - it's awesome!
• There are an incredible number of supermarkets (and smaller markets run by Chinese folks) on almost every block. The one we trade at is two blocks away and sells everything from bulk lentils to whole fish to refrigerators. We buy most of our fruit & veg from the verduleria, our chicken & eggs from the granja de pollo store, our coffee from the cafe store...you get the idea.
• I could go on with these nuggets, but my most important observation is that the people we have encountered, and continue to encounter every day in Buenos Aires, have been consistently very kind, helpful, and friendly to us. I have spoken only Spanish since arriving (except w/ real estate agents and embassy people), and my self-taught Spanish is not the greatest. However, people seem to understand me and are kind enough to help me succeed in whatever I'm trying to do. So, muchas gracias to the people of Buenos Aires!

"Un Cuento de Comida"

Ricardo and cow

Joe and cow

Mere coincidence . . . or fate? Maybe it's just the fact that there is a lot of "beef" around us here. Oh, what is the coincidence, you ask? Over a couple of weeks ago, Joe posed for this man/cow photo. Now, movie posters with Ricardo Darín (the talented and prolific Argentine actor) and a cow are being plastered over every surface in town (slogan: An Argentine and a Chinese, united by a cow that fell from the sky). It will open in 3 days. Hey, we pioneered this look weeks ago! Look carefully at the perturbed or is it more of a resigned look on the faces. Weeeeeeirdo! or "Raroooo".

OK, this blog story is really about food, a large portion of which is beef, but not exclusively. I will go down the line of things that are popularly eaten with an accompanying slide show to your right. Think meat and bread.

• Meat: Parillas, or barbeques, are what they call restaurants that serve a hearty selection of beef including steaks, milanesas (breaded and fried veal cutlet - often on a big white french roll) - you can get a delicious, lean steak (enough to feed both of us) for less than 10 USD . . . less if you go to a funkier open-grill style parilla stand. There are also what they call "tenedor libre" restaurants which indicates that you pay one price and get all you can eat! We haven't been hungry enough for one of those yet!
• Chicken: Found at the Peruvian restaurants - yummy roasted 1/4 or 1/2 chickens with rice or french fries, and salad (kind of a shredded cafeteria kind). Also Argentine restaurants can do a great job with chicken breast and a variety of cheesy sauces. "Pechuga"(white meat) is called "Suprema" here.

Best Choripan: in Belgrano near Chinatown

• Bread: bread baskets of delicious crusty white and/or wheat rolls brought with every restaurant meal, empanadas everywhere (meat and/or cheese stuffed little tunrovers), tartas (vegetables, tuna, cheese, and/or meat) in a small tart pie crust - my favorites are the basil, tomato, cheese combos, pastries galore like in a french bakery (little croissants called "media-lunas" are all the rage) - we've even found brownies, a pizza restaurant on every corner, pasta is offered both for sit-down customers at restaurants (sauce sold separately - so don't be fooled by the seemingly cheap prices) and to-go at many venues including our favorite ice-cream shop.
• Vegetables: Prepare all vegetables at home - the ingredients can be bought and prepared much more efficiently than any restaurant we've found.
• Fruit: Decent and varied, especially if you buy it from the Peruvian/Bolivian vendors with stands in the neighborhoods.
• Ice cream: cheap, big, and fantastic!
• Coffee: Not so good - one cup in a café is 2.50 USD and it's hard to find good beans. We've resorted to buying ground beans in a specialty coffee shop. Great taste, but expensive!
• Wine: Delicious and cheap - you can get a good bottle of red wine for 2.50 USD - fancy bottle in restaurant 12 USD. "Malbec" seems to be our varietal of choice.
• Choripan! OK, and now the "to die for" super-food of Buenos Aires . . . the chorizo (sausage) in bread (pan). We have, or at least Joe has, left no neighborhood unturned in our search for the perfect choripan. We have found it in Belgrano - northwest of our neighborhood on the 29 bus line. At least it is currently in first place. The chimichurri that accompanies it (sauce made of vinegar, parsely, and garlic) is superb, and the bread is always fresh. The sausage is full of flavor, edible fat morsels, and no gristle (a pet-peeve of mine). So, there is a photo of this glorious who-knows-what-kind-of-meat-goes-into-it kind of superfood. Did I mention we can split one for 2.00 USD (8 pesos)? What a deal!

So, all in all, while living in a meat-dominated culture, we do have to make an effort to mix in some chicken, fruit, and veg. As for those steaks and choripanes, we are resigned to the fact that the low prices and the high quality make it necessary to give in every once in a while. As for Ricardo, we'll have to see the movie to explain his expression.

Carnaval "de Cristina"

La Presidenta de Argentina

We just finished up a four-day holiday in these parts - the much-talked about Carnaval "long weekend" celebrated and enjoyed with relish by 40 million Argentines. Apparently a fixture in the bygone Peron era, governments of the more recent past had put an end to the practice of combining Fat Monday and Fat Tuesday with the preceding weekend to create a nice bonus breather for all citizens. Argentina's current President, Cristina Kirchner, in a perhaps brilliant strategic move, revived the long weekend custom just this year. Yes, it is an election year (did you guess?), but my unfamiliarity with local politics will not allow me to comment much further. Let's just say Cristina's a heavy favorite come October.


Fun in the streets of Almagro

At first, Jen and I thought, "Wow! Long weekend! Let's go somewhere!" There are so many places in Argentina we have on our "must visit" list, it seemed logical to try and hit one. On second thought, and after seeing the prices for tickets and hotels doubling and tripling before our eyes, at the last moment we decided to stay close to home sweet home and relish our own neighborhood. It finally dawned on me: "We live in freaking Buenos Aires, for crissakes! We're already in a world-class destination! And we've already paid for the room!" Made perfect sense.



Anyway, we just hung around and did local stuff: went to museums (there are some awesome art museums - to be discussed), artisan markets in Recoleta and San Telmo...the town was almost empty and was a pleasure to just wander around the colorful streets. In addition, Jen & Joe's personalized anniversary (creatively dubbed, "Love Day") fell right in the middle of the long weekend and I had promised Jen we would go to "the best restaurant in town" (food blog upcoming!). All in all, I think we made the correct decision in staying close to home while millions fought traffic on the highways and byways of Argentina.

The drum corps

Luckily, we were able to catch a Carnaval celebration on Saturday night in a nearby barrio, somewhat funky Almagro. Armed with our cameras, we made it there on foot in time to see some of the festivities. Like Rio or New Orleans on a micro scale, there were marching bands and dance troupes from the neighborhood, dressed in costume, wailing away in the street. The whole thing is very family oriented and felt very safe, if you didn't mind getting sprayed down with water or shaving cream. It was a very colorful introduction to the Carnaval spirit here in oh-so- European Buenos Aires. I honestly had no idea thay even held Carnaval celebrations in Argentina!

Whirlwind trip to Paraná

Pedestrian shopping area near the central plaza

We have now been in Argentina for a little over a month, nearly the entire time spent exploring Buenos Aires. Last week, I entered a new chapter: work! I gave two presentations on English Language Methodology, one in Buenos Aires to an audience of over 150, and another in Paraná, a city northeast of BA in the state of Entre Rios. It was about a 5 hour car trip on a straight highway with grassy flat land to either side. Paraná is on the other side of the river from another city called Santa Fe. Speaking of which, due to the fact that Santa Fe is not only a major street in BA and a major city in Argentina, the postal clerk looks confused when I send packages to Santa Fe in the U.S. Anyhow, to get to Paraná, you have to wind through the city of Santa Fe (it seems as though the highway just dead ends in the city . . . ) and then go through a loooong tunnel under the river - voila! you are in Paraná.

English teachers and trainees after my presentation

In the 22 hours that I was there, I got a true small-town feel. One of my hosts, a young man who teaches at the teacher training college, took me on a short drive around town to see the impressive wide brown river, Spanish colonial houses, parks full of families relaxing, people bustling through the streets, and the occasional "cartonero" collecting recyclables. My host had gotten a scholarship recently, and he told me about his impressions of Washington, DC, Boston, San Francisco, and Kansas City. He thought that DC was "such an organized city" and that everyone was very welcoming and friendly. He was surprised that you have to move to the right on an escalator to let people pass. As he and his 11 other fellow scholarship grantees were chattering away on a subway escalator in DC, a local man came up behind them and said, "Excuse me. There should be space on the left!". In the supermarkets, he was shocked, not by the scanning equipment the cashiers had to check people out (they have giant hyper-markets here too!), but by the fact that you could opt to "check yourself out" by scanning your own items. He said it would never work in Argentina! In San Francisco, he was surprised by the number of homeless people he saw. "You see it (homelessness) here in Argentina, but I just imagined it to be different in the States." Lastly, as I notice with many international scholars that I meet, he was impressed by the diversity in the US. Here in Argentina, you see very few Asian people and even fewer Black people - almost exclusively of European descent. There are some immigrants from Bolivia and Peru, but overall, there is not a wide variety of people from other races and cultures. I think people hear how "diverse" the US is, but for some it is visually impressive (sometimes shocking) to "see" the diversity.

Church on the central plaza

Anyhow, I made it back to BA having made a bunch of new friends in Paraná! The hospitality was great, the teachers were enthusiastic, and everyone had a great sense of fun and humor. I hope I can meet up with those folks again - and next time spend more time in their city.