Probably the South American pronunciation of Spanish mostly dates back to the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries; with, perhaps, an added blunt plainness born of generations of free rough life on the vast expanses of the Pampa.
Modern innovations in the written or spoken language of Argentina and Uruguay can usually be traced to the great stream of immigration constantly flowing to these countries, chiefly from Italy and Spain.
ARGENTINES AND URUGUAYANS
The inhabitants of the two Republics of Argentina and Uruguay are only similar in appearance and natural characteristics to the superficial or hasty observer. There are several points in which they really differ fundamentally, the difference being due, as has just been observed, to the fact that the original settlements of the two parts of the River Plate Territories were drawn from different parts of Spain and that the later cosmopolitan stream of immigration passed by Montevideo, on account of the constantly politically disturbed condition of Uruguay, and disembarked only at Buenos Aires. Therefore the Uruguayan has retained the characteristics of his Spanish ancestors in far greater purity than has the Argentine.
It is therefore impossible to club the two peoples together in any attempt at a description or even indication of their leading characteristics.
By way of rough comparison it may be said that while the Argentine has gained in polish and versatility by interbreeding with immigrants from many European countries, chiefly from all parts of Italy, the Uruguayan has retained a very large share of the dogged honesty, obstinacy and capacity for sustained effort in hard work of his Basque and Galician ancestors.
In passing from comparison to particular analysis one is at once confronted with the difficult question, “What is an Argentine?”
According to Argentine Law, all children born on Argentine soil are ipso facto Argentines, but to attempt classification of the offspring of mixed marriages in several degrees of remoteness of parentage would immediately become a complex impossibility. Certain influences, however, imposed by the life and surroundings in Argentina, affect all individuals brought up there, no matter what may be or have been the nationality of their immediate or remoter ancestry.
But, with this exception, any description or setting forth of the leading characteristics of “Argentines” can only safely be submitted in regard to the direct descendants of the Spanish Conquistadores and early settlers and of the mixed unions between these and the aboriginal Indian women. The further but much rarer admixture of African blood introduced by slave labour, is almost a negligible quantity in the upper classes, though of considerable and noticeable influence in the lower, especially in the Northern Provinces, in which the mixture of Indian and Negro blood is very considerable.
Nevertheless, these elements of Spanish, Indian and Negro became fused into a national type the picturesqueness of which is now (alas!) being rapidly absorbed and transformed in the melting-pot in which it meets strange elements from every part of civilized Europe.