Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
2nd person plural conjugation not used any-
where else in South America. Listen carefully
and you'll also note differences in vocabulary.
For example, “avocado,” which in Spanish is
“aguacate,” is “palta” in Argentina. “Money,”
which is “dinero,” is referred to here as “yira,”
while a silly person is not “tonto” but “boludo.”
“Bárbaro!” is “fantastic!”
A Capsule History
“
Y allí levantamos una ciudad que se
llama Buenos Aires
- And here we
raised a city called Buenos Aires.”
When these words were written in the 16th cen-
tury, the chronicler must have been quite a
visionary. At that time, the “city” had only a few
hundred inhabitants. With its new port barred
from commerce by its Spanish rulers, the future
did not look too bright. But just a century later,
Buenos Aires had become a cultural center and
the heart of South America's fight for freedom
from Spain. The cosmopolitan metropolis of
today can be traced back to Indians who inhab-
ited the area for centuries before the first Euro-
peans arrived.
Before the Spanish
Argentina and Chile were the last areas of what
is now South America to be inhabited by early
humans. The Bering Straits formed a bridge
from Asia to America during the Ice Age, pro-
viding the first group of Asians with access to
the west around 25,000 B.C. The earliest set-
