Argentina's boom

Marcelo García, President of the Association of Language Centres (ALC) in Argentina, says, “Since the devaluation of the Argentine peso in 2002, the country has become much more affordable for foreigners who wish to learn Spanish here. In fact, in my opinion, the number of foreign students doubled between 2004 and last year.” He also believes that Buenos Aires is becoming one of the four most important destinations for Spanish language study, “The other three being Madrid, Barcelona, and Mexico City,” he adds. And the growing importance of Spanish language study in Argentina is reflected by the fact that ALC began in 1993 as an association of language schools teaching English to Argentines, but changed its focus in 2002.

There is no register of language schools in Argentina and the industry is unregulated. ALC has 100 member schools, although there are likely to be hundreds of other centres of varying quality that are not members. Many thousands of Argentines also teach Spanish to foreigners on a private basis.

Before 2002, Argentina was one of the most expensive countries in Latin America. There was one-to-one peso/dollar parity while today one dollar fetches three pesos. Clelia Sartori, Director of the International Bureau of Language in Buenos Aires, says, “We are now teaching around 120 foreign nationals a week, against around 100 a week last year. I think the main reason for the boom is that it’s comparatively cheap to study and live in this country.”

Some 20 per cent of students represented in the Department of Tourism survey came from the USA, 16 per cent from Brazil, 13 per cent from Germany, and eight per cent from the UK. Australian, Canadian, Japanese and French students also figured in the nationality mix. Forty-one per cent of those surveyed gave value for money in Argentina (or the factor “cheap”) as a reason to study Spanish there – this was the second most popular reason given after wanting to get to know the culture of the country.

Twenty-one per cent of those surveyed also said that they considered Argentina to be safer than other South American countries. Sixty-one per cent were aged between 19 and 30 and 72 per cent planned their trip including Spanish language study, while 11 per cent decided to learn the language on arrival in the country.

This survey shows that foreigners stay in the country for an average of 10 weeks and spend an average of four studying the language. According to a separate survey by the Argentine Foreign Office and the Argentine Association of Spanish Teachers of some 89 Spanish language centres (with a total of 13,085 foreign students in 2005), 49 per cent of students spent more than 20 hours a week studying Spanish while 24 per cent studied for between 15 and 20 hours.

Laura Roseti, Director of the Language Laboratory of the Faculty of Philosophy and Letters of the University of Buenos Aires (UBA), relates that the number of foreign nationals studying Spanish at the school rose from 926 in 2004 to 1,948 last year. “The demand is so great that we are soon opening another centre in a different part of the city,” she says. “One of the trends we are seeing is that a growing proportion of our students are in fact tourists. Buenos Aires is a beautiful city and many of our students [come] for cultural reasons.”

In 2005, the Department of Tourism published a useful guide in English and Portuguese, called Studying Spanish in Argentina. The burgeoning industry also led the Argentine Ministry of Education, in conjunction with UBA and other state universities, to establish an examination specifically for foreigners last year, called Certificado de Español Lengua y Uso.

Argentina, in particular Buenos Aires, is likely to continue to develop as an important centre for Spanish language study as long as the country remains a cheap destination for foreign visitors.

Argentine Spanish

The variant of Spanish spoken in Argentina should not create any special problems for foreigners who choose to learn the language in the country but wish to practise it in another Spanish-speaking country, according to language experts in Argentina.

Argentine Spanish differs from Spanish in Spain in four principal ways: for the second person singular, vos is used rather than tú; for the second person plural, ustedes is used instead of vosotros; in spoken Argentine Spanish, the simple past tense is applied instead of the present perfect; and the Argentine accent contains a strong Italian influence.

The difference between Argentine Spanish and the Spanish from the rest of Latin America is not so great. The use of vos is unique to Argentina and Uruguay, but throughout Latin America, for the third person plural, ustedes is used.

Ezequiel Cerioni, a private Spanish language teacher based in Buenos Aires, who charges 25 pesos (US$8) for an hour-long class, says: “Spanish spoken here is obviously different from that from Spain. But it should not create any insurmountable problems for those who wish to learn the language here but interact with other Spanish-speaking peoples. It’s a bit like an Argentine going to Britain and studying English but then having to use his English language skills with someone from Texas in the USA.”