How Spanish shapes Heritage Italian in Buenos Aires

What is it about?

A person growing up with a language at home that differs from the language(s) spoken in society is known as a heritage speaker. This study examines Italian heritage speakers in Buenos Aires, the capital of Argentina, where Spanish is the dominant language. For over 100 years, many Italians have moved to Argentina, leaving a lasting impact on its culture and language. Linguists are interested in how languages affect each other and how languages change over time. Given its historical context, Buenos Aires is an ideal place to study how Spanish and Italian interact. While we know a lot about Italian influences on Argentinean Spanish, we still have little knowledge about how Spanish might have influenced the language(s) of Italian descendants. The study explores whether various phenomena (related to how words and sentences are formed) change in the same way. To investigate this, an online test was conducted where participants rated several sentences, slightly changed to show some mistakes, on a scale from “The sentence is very well-formed” to “The sentence is really bad.” Participants included 60 heritage Italians from Buenos Aires and 200 Italians from Italy, recruited through social media. The results showed clear differences between these two groups, proving that living in a new place and language contact can change the way people talk. ---- Heritage speakers offer a unique window into how languages change in multilingual settings. Research in places like Buenos Aires—where migration has shaped linguistic life for generations—helps us better understand the dynamic relationship between language, history, and identity.

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Photo by Nestor Barbitta on Unsplash

Photo by Nestor Barbitta on Unsplash