Get yourself a mate (this one 🧉), and come back to this article. This is an insider’s guide to the elements of the Argentinian accent.

The more I compare Argentine accent with other Spanish speaking countries (except to Uruguay’s that is), the more I become aware that there’s something to it. For some reason, it’s likable.

The prototypical Argentine personality might contribute to this, but the pronunciation and intonation definitely have more to do with it.

Whatever your reasons for digging deep into our accent are, you have to know that you’ll have to devote time to identify the features and apply the strategies I’m about to share with you.

I recorded audio files to give you a reference of all aspects I mention during the post. Hope it helps!

TL;DR: How to speak AR Spanish

Why bother?

Depending on what brought you here, you might be asking yourself the question. In my case, I never made a decision regarding which English accent I wanted to master. I just thought that my goal was to speak English well all the way. Today, I’m a hybrid at best.

It’s perfectly fine if you don’t mind which Spanish you speak. The main goal is to speak and be understood without interference. Accent usually comes at a later stage and it’s a deliberate choice.

And, hey, don’t forget it’s a remarkable achievement to finally master it.

There are language learners who set off with a preference or get to spend time in one particular Spanish speaking country. If this is your case, be it that you a) like the Argentinian accent or b) you are living in Argentina, surrounding yourself with the sounds of this particular variety of Spanish is a must. All of your interactions will turn into accent training sessions.

The importance of patterns

Language, in writing, has patterns. Which? Those that syntax demands. Spoken language does have patterns, too. Which? Those of speech.

See, when I read something written in Spanish chances are I might come across with a word that hints the nationality of the writer, but it’s not as obvious as if I listen to someone speaking. It will take me a few seconds in that case.

Why is that? How’s that possible?

Because speech expresses much more than written language!

Specifically, there are 4 elements we need to address. The four ingredients of what we call an accent are:

1. Pronunciation
2. Word stress
3. Intonation
4. Flow

Veamos.

Pronunciation

This is the most elementary building block. You need to make sure you know the sounds of Spanish as well as those characteristic of Argentine Spanish.

Let’s review.

Your vowels should be short and crisp, especially Os and Es

• Muy bueno
• Bastante caro
• Muy tarde
• Luz verde
• Quiero eso

Your Rs should be rolling Rs

RA | RE | RI | RO | RU

• ¡Rápido, ruso! ¡Regresa al río!
• Rompe ramas y rema contra la corriente.
• En ruinas, roto, arruinado.
• Repetí: reíte y relajá.

Your Bs and Vs should sound the same (like a /b/ in English)

• Vos
• Buenas
• Verdad
• Vino
• Baño
• Avión
• Buenos Aires
• ¡Vamos!

Your Ys and LLs should sound like /sh/

• Me llamó Guille.
• Callate la boca.
• Llename de besos.
• El cumpleaños de Yael es en mayo
• Yo de eso ya no sé.
• Llevame las llaves a la clase de yoga.

Your Zs, Cs and Ss should all sound like /s/ . There is no lisp in the Argentine accent.

• Zapatilla
• Cecilia
• Astros
• Casamiento
• Cazador

The letter H is always silent

• Ahora
• Hoy
• Hay
• Había
• Cohete

Also keep in mind that preconsonantic S before c, g, l, m, p and v is similar to an H in english:

• escuchá /ehcuchá/
• búsqueda /búhqueda/
• cosquillas /cohquillas/
• Moscú /Mohcú/
• rasguñar /rahguñar/
• isla /ihla/
• muslo /muhlo/
• esmalte /ehmalte/
• esmero /ehmero/
• hospital /ohpital/
• español /ehpañol/
• despierto /dehpierto/
• Osvaldo /Ohvaldo/

If you listen carefully, you will notice that we do the same when the s is the last letter of a word and the following word starts with c or l:

• los lunes /loh lunes/
• las cosas /lahcosas/
• mis creencias /mihcreencias/
• el más grande /elmahgrande/
• tus labios /tuhlabios/
• las moscas /lahmohcas/
• es lo mismo /ehlomihmo/
• es verdad /ehverdad/

and final Ds in the suffix -idad | -edad are dropped:

• verdad /verdá/
• claridad /claridá/
• barbaridad /barbaridá/
• solidaridad /solidaridá/

Troubleshoot any issues on this area before moving further. And remember that retraining your mouth takes time and practice.

Word stress

You can’t just hope for the best when it comes to word stress. You know that sometimes Spanish, as opposed to English, signals stressed syllables with a tilde. You can’t miss those.

But there is more to word stress than that rule.

It gets more tricky. If a word has no tilde and ends in a vowel, n or s, then the second to last vowel is stressed. If the words end in any other consonant, the last syllable is stressed.

Spanish tends to stress the second to last syllable in a word ending in n, s or a vowel. We use tildes to show that the word is an exception to the rule.

Also, since we are discussing the AR Spanish accent, don’t lose sight of the fact that Argentinian Spanish reflects the impact of VOS forms in verb stress in the present and imperative affirmative forms.

I’m not going to repeat myself here, but you can find examples in the article linked just above.

Intonation

This is the musical side of languages. This is why we can say, for example, that Brazilian Portuguese sounds livey or German intimidating.

Our tone of voice conveys a lot of meaning. You might do it instinctively in your native language, but then all of a sudden forget to do it when you speak Spanish.

Keep an eye on this. If you are surprised, convey surprise in your intonation. The same if you are angry, happy, curious or uncertain.

In Spanish, declarative intonation is typically descending while interrogative intonation, on the other hand, is typically ascending.

• Necesitás ayuda. ↓
• ¿Necesitás ayuda? ↑

In longer sentences we usually raise the pitch of our voice to highlight specific words to prevent the ship (the sentence) from sinking. Look at this example:

• Lo primero que hago ↓| cuando me levanto ↓ a la mañana ↑, | es prepararme un mate ↓

A side note: if you compare spoken AR Spanish and Italian, it is easy to notice the similarities between the two. Italian has exerted a decisive influence on AR Spanish and the intonation of Italian was assimilated into our Spanish in ways we (natives) are not usually aware of.

Flow

Often, non-native speakers produce the sounds of their target language, but integrating them as if they were speaking in their own language.

That is a no-no at this stage.

Flow refers to the rhythm of the spoken language. Listening and imitating the rhythm of native speakers is key to mastering flow.

Flow has to do especially with learning to link sounds in a phrase or sentence and with being in the pocket, as we say in music to keeping time.

In Spanish, rhythm requires that each syllable and, above all, each word have approximately the same duration.

In order to do that, function words (such as articles, possessives or prepositions) are packed together with content words (nouns, adjectives, verbs and adverbs).

• el aceite de oliva – elaceite deoliva
• la puerta de mi casa – lapuerta demicasa
• un oso rojo – unoso rojo
• tres de mis amigos – tres demisamigos
• el otro día – elotrodía

If a vowel is the last letter in a word and first letter in the other, it might also sound as if the word is only one.

In some cases, we might make one vowel sound out of two repeated vowels:

• Hola a todos /Holatodos/
• Una remera azul /Unaremerazul/
• Ese estudiante /Esestudiante/
• La anterior /Lanterior/

As they are so relevant to the flow of our speech, let’s tackle groups of meaning. This is our sample sentence:

“Mi hermano vive en Dinamarca.”

Groups of meaning are extremely important in all languages. When you have groups of meaning you have bigger bricks than the isolated words, and if you do it well, you’ll sound much more natural. In this example the blocks are:

Who – mi hermano

What (ACTION) – vive

Where – en Dinamarca

If you heard me saying the sentence and weren’t reading it, you would not be able to tell there are 5 words in this sentence. If I asked you, you’d probably say three.

“Mihermano | vive | endinamarca.”

Maybe, even 2:

“Mihermano | vivendinamarca.”

Each chunk carries stress in one syllable. Can you hear it?

And one last thing: Argentine Spanish is perceived as fast spoken, but this should not be your ultimate goal. Slowing down and focusing on all that has been said is much more recommended than chasing light-speed articulation.

My favourite examples

A great example of Argentinian accent craftmanship is Dustin Luke. In case you don’t kow him, he is an American guy from Atlanta who fell in love (or did he get obsessed?) with Porteño Spanish and went on to acquire a native Argentinian accent.

How did he do it?

In order to achieve such an impressive feat, he lived in Argentina for several years, surrounded himself with anything but the local dialect, dated an Argentine girl and eventually accomplished his goal. He talks about this in many of his videos, and I like to listen to him describe his journey. Make sure you check him out.

UPDATE: I recently discovered Ladistino, a French guy who also fell in love with Argentina and absolutely nailed the accent. Great IG channel to check out.

And THIS amazing YT series called “¿Por qué acá?” in which you will be able to listen to interviews to several expats who decided to settle down in Argentina. Most of them have become proficient Argentinian Spanish speakers. Listening to foreign people speaking AR Spanish gives me immense joy.

Final words

Of course, reading is one thing, and speaking is another, but they interact with each other. The best is to find a YouTube video with an accurate transcription. I’ll soon be posting some ways in which you can take your Argentinian accent to the next level.

If you’ve come until the end of this post, congratulations then. You’re serious about Rioplatense Spanish! You might also want to check the Argentinian Spanish Crash Course PDF I created.

Also, it would be great to hear from you if you are interested in taking online Spanish classes with me.

Happy Spanish learning,

Sign up to the newsletter and download your FREE Argentinian Spanish Phrasebook! CLICK HERE

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