I'm officially acostumbrada (accustomed) to the porteño way of saying hello and goodbye. Even if you are meeting someone for the first time, the polite thing to do is give them a beso (kiss). Not a full smack on the lips, just the side-cheek-brush. Like the French do, except only once instead of twice. My first side-cheek-brush happened when my site director picked me up from the airport. I was too enthralled with the idea I had just landed in Argentina to notice. It happened again when I walked into the door of my house to meet the dueño de la casa (landlord) and many more times my first day here as I met everyone. I was usually a second or two behind on the lean in and sometimes got concerned as to why someone's face was headed so close to mine. Slowly but surely I was picking up on it. But it isn't just for hello; it's also goodbye. And when you leave somewhere you have to say goodbye to every single person, even if you are at a party. That's a lot of besos. Now my natural inclination is to go in for the kiss, American friends included! I think I'll have some explaining to do when I get back to the States.
I'm also getting used to Argentine Spanish. I thought I'd have an advantage by studying abroad in a country where I had studied and relatively spoke the language. Unfortunately, I didn't take into account that Argentines have an accent that's even harder to decipher than the Bar-th-lona E-th-paña lisp. In the Argentine Spanish, or should I say Caste-sh-ano, the double L's make a sha sounds instead of the silent Y sound most Spanish speakers are used to. For example, it isn't amar-Y-o (amarillo=yellow), it's amari-SH-o and it's not e-Y-a (ella=she), it's e-SH-a. I knew this before I arrived in BsAs but when someone starts speaking to you and the sha is coming on strong, you start to lose the years of Spanish you studied.
There's also Lunfardo. Just when I think I was getting a grasp on things, they throw me a curve ball. Lunfardo is a slang that came around in the 1900's in the poorer barrios (neighborhoods) of Buenos Aires and is still in use today all over the country. Most tango songs incorporate at least a little lunfardo into the lyrics, which turned it into a phenomenon in the country that values tango more than oxygen. Lunfardo works by reversing syllables of words. Tango becomes gotan, pizza becomes zapi, and cafe con leche (coffee with milk) becomes feca con chele.
Some advice I'll give out that has taken me far: if the besos, caste-SH-ano, and lunfardo slang become too much for you, just smile and say dale (it means okay or good, but porteños use it for EVERYTHING). No one will be the wiser.
¡Besos!
