Transcript

Interviewer:

What is Lunfardo?

Cecilia Garrido:

Lunfardo is slang with a vocabulary of around 6000 words which emerged among the lower class in Buenos Aires around the second half of the nineteenth century. Its name comes from Lombardo [Lombardy], the Italian region, and it is associated with the tango culture which followed a similar process of going from dark origins to being accepted as part of the Argentinean culture.

Lunfardo has its origins among the lower-class immigrant population arriving in Buenos Aires from Europe and particularly from Italy, and some of these immigrants found themselves quite lost in, in this new city and became involved in criminal activities. Therefore, Lunfardo had two main purposes: one, communication across different languages, and two, the development of some sort of code that would allow them to have something in common that would prevent the police to know about their illicit activities.

Interviewer:

Can you give us a few examples of, um, Lunfardo words?

Cecilia Garrido:

Well, according to José Gobello, who is the president of the Academia Porteña del Lunfardo, the lexicon of Lunfardo came from, in three different ways. One was loans from other languages, so from Italian for instance, so, um, you will have gamba, which is ‘leg’ in Italian. Also, bouillon, from French, which is ‘soup’, um, but also there were redefinition of existing vocabularies. So, for instance quemar, which in Spanish means ‘burn’, was used as meaning ‘killing with a firearm’, so that was kind of using, you know, the words in a different way, but perhaps the more creative way, um, of words … coming in to Lunfardo was the, um, making up of new words by distorting existing words. So for, instance, the word vesre, which is changing the order of existing words, the word revés became vesre in Lunfardo.

Interviewer:

So, it’s said backwards, isn’t it?

Cecilia Garrido:

It says … Well, it’s changing the orders because this is not the, exactly backwards but it’s changing the orders, and others were kind of mutilated. So, for instance, the word comissario became sario. And other things like, for instance, garpar came from pagar. So, it’s, it was changing, you know, playing with the existing words.

Interviewer:

What did society at large think of, er, Lunfardo?

Cecilia Garrido:

Well, the reputation of Lunfardo has undergone the same change as tango, which basically from being not acceptable and very low reputation to become something that is part of the cultural identity, the Argentinean cultural identity. At the beginning, because it was limited to the underclasses, it was not accepted, and when it changed then it became more acceptable and tango became part of the entertainment in Europe and then regained some kind of prestige and became prestigious in Argentina. Similarly, Lunfardo has, has had the same evolution.

Interviewer:

Is it used these days?

Cecilia Garrido:

Well, despite its dark origin some words and expressions have actually entered the mainstream language but only in a colloquial manner, and it is accepted, and the fact that it’s been studied, and that there is literature and its manifestations in poetry are kind of becoming known, it’s given it a different life, and this academy of, that studies Lunfardo looks after not only studying it but looking at its preservation for the future.

Interviewer:

So, there’s actually an ‘academy of Lunfardo’?

Cecilia Garrido:

Yes, the Academia Porteña del Lunfardo, created in 1962, actually devotes its work to studying and looking for the preservation of Lunfardo for the future.