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. 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. 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. Guarani and Quechua are other important languages in Argentina with 200,000 speakers and 65,000 speakers respectively. Fifteen Indigenous American languages 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, such as 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.

Official language

The Republic of Argentina has not established, legally, an official language; however, Spanish has been utilized since the founding of the Argentine state by the administration of the Republic and is used in education in all public establishments, so much so that in basic and secondary levels there is a mandatory subject of Spanish (a subject called "language"). Since 1952, The Argentine Academy of Letters, which was founded in 1931, has regularly collaborated with The Royal Spanish Academy to register local variants. Even though the Constitution establishes the jurisdiction of the National Congress "to recognize the ethnic and cultural pre-existence of indigenous peoples of Argentina", the native languages have not been recognized as official, except in the provinces of Chaco and Corrientes. The most prevalent dialect in Argentina is Rioplatense, whose speakers are located primarily in the basin of the Río de la Plata. There is also Cuyo Spanish and Cordobés Spanish. In the north, Andean Spanish is spoken and in the northeast there is a great influence from Paraguayan Spanish. Argentina is one of several Spanish-speaking countries (along with Uruguay, Paraguay, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Honduras, and Costa Rica) that almost universally use what is known as voseo—the use of the pronoun vos instead of tú (the familiar "you") as well as its corresponding verb forms. A phonetic study conducted by the Laboratory for Sensory Investigations of [CONICET] and the University of Toronto showed that the intonation Porteño Spanish is unlike that of other Spanish varieties, and suggested that it may be a result of convergence with Italian. Italian immigration influenced Lunfardo, the slang spoken in the Río de la Plata region, permeating the vernacular vocabulary of other regions as well. As in other large countries, the accents vary depending on geographical location. Extreme differences in pronunciation can be heard within Argentina. One notable pronunciation difference found in Argentina is the "sh" sounding y and ll. In most Spanish speaking countries the letters y and ll are pronounced somewhat like the "y" in yo-yo, however in most parts of Argentina they are pronounced like "sh" in English (such as "shoe") or like "zh" (such as the sound the ⟨s⟩ makes in "measure"). In many of the central and north-eastern areas of the country, the trilled /r/ takes on the same sound as the ⟨ll⟩ and ⟨y⟩ ('zh' – a voiced palatal fricative sound, similar to the "s" in the English pronunciation of the word "vision"). For Example, "Río Segundo" sounds like "Zhio Segundo" and "Corrientes" sounds like "Cozhientes". The ISO639 code for Argentine Spanish is "es-AR".

Classification

The Indo-European languages spoken in Argentina by stable communities fall into five branches: Romance (Spanish, Italian, and Portuguese), West Germanic (English, Plautdietsch and standard German), Celtic languages (Welsh), and Central Indo-Aryan (Romani). On the other hand, the indigenous languages of Argentina are very diverse and fall into different linguistic families... (†): extinct language

Living languages

In addition to Spanish, the following living languages are registered in Argentina with local growth:

Other European languages

Sign language

Argentine Sign Language, understood by around two million deaf people of Argentina, their instructors, descendants, and others. There are different regional variants, such as in Cordoba.

Quechuan languages

Southern Quechua: from the family of Quechuan languages. There are seven variations present that are marked by their geographical origin, detailed here are South Bolivian Quechua and Santiagueño Quechua:

Tupi-Guarani languages

In the provinces of Corrientes, Misiones, Chaco, Formosa, Entre Ríos, and Buenos Aires dialects of Argentine Guarani are spoken or known by nearly one million people, including Paraguayan immigrants that speak Paraguayan Guarani or Jopara. In Corrientes, the Argentine Guarani dialect was decreed co-official in 2004 and made obligatory in educational instruction and the government.

Mapuche

The Mapuche language is an isolated language that had approximately speakers in the provinces of Neuquén, Río Negro, Chubut, and Santa Cruz in 2004, with an ethnic population of people.

Aymara

Central Aymara is a language of the Aymaran group, spoken by inhabitants of Jujuy, of the North of Salta, besides the immigrants of Puna and of Peru.

Mataco-Guaicuru languages

From the Mataco or Mataguyao group: From the Guaicuru group:

In danger of extinction

Extinct languages

In addition to surviving indigenous languages, before the contact with Europeans and during some time during the Colonization of the Americas in Argentina they spoke the following languages, that are currently extinct: