Argentine vs Mexican Spanish: 30 Words That Change

Ask for "una torta" in Buenos Aires and you get a slice of cake. Ask for the same thing in Mexico City and you get a sandwich in a crusty roll. Both cities speak Latin American Spanish, and that label hides two quite different everyday languages: different words for the bus, the T-shirt and the avocado, a different "you" with its own verb endings, and a different sound for the letters ll and y.

Below: 30 word pairs counted in our own Spanish decks, the vos conjugation box, the "sh" of Buenos Aires, ahorita and mande, lunfardo, the Spanish of the United States, and what all this means for what you study.

Two Latin Americas, not one

The Spain vs Latin American Spanish post treats Latin America as one side. For a trip, it is not: Mexico and Argentina have different words for many everyday things, and a learner meets four layers of difference:

• Words. Bus, T-shirt, jacket, money, the waiter: things you need on day one.
• The pronoun. Mexico says tú; Argentina and Uruguay say vos, with their own verb forms.
• Sound. In Buenos Aires and Montevideo, ll and y sound like "sh".
• Slang. Güey and chido in Mexico, che and bárbaro in Argentina.

In the table, "Mexico" also stands for much of Central America and for most of the Spanish you hear in the US, where most Spanish speakers have Mexican roots. That is a simplification: Central America has words of its own, and much of it uses vos like Argentina. "Argentina, Uruguay" means the Spanish of the River Plate, around Buenos Aires and Montevideo.

30 words that change, counted in our own decks

A script searched all 38 of our public Spanish decks, 9,113 cards, for both words of every pair. The number in brackets is how many cards use the word, on the front or in the example sentence; the deck column links the deck where it appears most, Mexico's word first. Where both countries say the same word, the row has one count and one deck. "Only in a note" means no card uses the word, but a regional note on another card names it. Words with a second meaning (pluma is also a feather, factura an invoice) count only where the card's translation shows the meaning in the table.

Getting around

In Mexico City the city bus is a camión and the long-distance coach an autobús; in Buenos Aires the bus is the colectivo (bondi in slang) and in Montevideo the ómnibus. Both countries manejan rather than conducen and buy a boleto. The suitcase is a maleta in Mexico, as in Spain, and a valija in the River Plate.

Eating and drinking

In Buenos Aires facturas are the pastries with your coffee, though a factura from a company is still an invoice. The peach is a durazno on both sides; melocotón is Spain's word. And the torta: cake in Argentina, a sandwich in a roll in Mexico, where cake is pastel.

Clothes, home and everyday things

Celular, computadora and departamento are where the two agree against Spain (Uruguay often says apartamento). The birome is named after László Bíró, who developed his ballpoint pen in Argentina. One word to avoid in Mexico: chaqueta, Spain's jacket, is vulgar slang there; say chamarra.

Talking to people

Dinero works everywhere; lana and plata are what friends say. "Dale" in Buenos Aires and "sale" in Mexico both mean "OK, deal".

Vos instead of tú

The biggest grammar difference is not in the table. Argentina and Uruguay use vos for the friendly singular "you", where Mexico uses tú. Vos is the normal form there, on billboards as much as in speech. In the present tense and the commands the verb changes; most other tenses stay as with tú.

The rule is short: take the infinitive, swap the final r for an s and stress the last vowel (hablar, hablás; tener, tenés), and the stem never changes, so querés, not quieres. Ser is the main exception: vos sos (and ir gives vos vas, as with tú). The pronouns te and tu stay, so "vos te llamás" and "tu casa" are both normal. You will hear the commands everywhere: "vení", "mirá", "decime", "dale, andá".

Vos is not only Argentine. Paraguay, much of Central America (Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Costa Rica) and parts of Colombia use it too, with local endings. As a visitor you can keep saying tú: everyone understands it. Learn to recognise vos; speak it if you stay.

The sound: "sh" in Buenos Aires, a clear s in Mexico

The first thing your ear notices in Buenos Aires is ll and y. "Calle" sounds like KAH-sheh, "yo" like "sho" and "playa" like PLAH-sha. Linguists call it sheísmo; older speakers use a softer "zh", like the s in "measure" (zheísmo). Montevideo does much the same. In Mexico the same letters sound like the English y in "yes": KAH-yeh.

Two more habits. In Buenos Aires an s before a consonant often softens to a breath, so "mismo" sounds like "mihmo" and "las dos" like "lah dos". Mexico City keeps every s clear and tends to swallow unstressed vowels instead. And the River Plate melody, rising and falling, is often compared to Italian, a trace of the Italian immigration around 1900.

Ahorita, mande and the Mexican diminutive

Mexican Spanish is famously polite, and three habits show it:

• Ahorita. Literally "right now", but it can mean now, in a minute, later, or politely never. "Ahorita voy" means it is on the list. "Ya mero" means "almost".
• Mande. When someone calls your name, or you did not catch a sentence, the answer is "¿mande?" rather than "¿qué?", which can sound blunt.
• The diminutive. -ito and -ita soften everything: un cafecito, un ratito, tantito, ahorita. It makes a request smaller and friendlier, not childish.

Add güey for "mate" (it comes from buey, ox, and between friends is friendly), chido and padre for "cool", and "órale" for anything from "OK" to "wow".

Lunfardo, che and re-: how Buenos Aires talks

Buenos Aires has its own slang, lunfardo, which grew around 1900 among the city's immigrants, and many of its words come from Italian. Laburo (a job) is from Italian lavoro. A few others you will hear: pibe (kid), mina (woman), guita (money), morfar (to eat), and vesre, saying words back to front, so café becomes feca.

Che is the all-purpose "hey" or "mate" ("che, ¿vamos?"), so common that Ernesto Guevara got his nickname from it. Bárbaro means great. And re- in front of an adjective means "really": "está re caro" is "it's really expensive", where Mexico says "bien caro" or "súper caro".

US Spanish: aplicar, troca and "te llamo pa'trás"

In the United States, Spanish lives next to English every day, and some English slips in. You will hear aplicar for "to apply for a job" (elsewhere solicitar), troca for a pickup truck, parquear for "to park", lonche for lunch, and "te llamo pa'trás", a word-for-word "I'll call you back". Switching between the two languages in one sentence, often called Spanglish, is normal among bilinguals.

None of this is a mistake; it is how millions of people talk. South of the border some of these words confuse people, so for a trip use the forms in the table.

And the rest: the Caribbean, the Andes and Chile

Mexico and Argentina are two corners. In the Caribbean (Cuba, Puerto Rico, the Dominican Republic) final s often disappears, the bus is a guagua and things that are great are chévere. In the Andes (highland Peru, Bolivia, Ecuador) speech is slower and consonants are kept, which many learners find easy to follow. Chile has its own fast slang, the tag "po" (from pues) and vos-style verb endings of its own: "¿cómo estái?". Each deserves a post; none needs a different textbook.

What our decks teach

Our Spanish decks are written in the Spanish of Spain, with Latin American forms marked in a regional note where they differ, and each Spanish deck page says so. The counts above show what that means for Mexico and Argentina. Where Mexico uses Spain's word (maleta, aguacate, falda), our decks have it. Where Argentina has its own word, it appears only in C2 Regional Variation & Nuance, or nowhere, and Mexico's own words (chamarra, elote, chamba) are the same story: of the 24 pairs with two different words, the Argentine form is on no card in 9 and the Mexican form in 10.

So keep using the decks for the grammar and the shared vocabulary, which is most of it. The Spanish A2 Conversations deck covers the everyday talk both countries share. For the country words, read the regional notes and take the kit for where you are going.

Where to go next

Find out how much Spanish you already know with the free Spanish vocabulary test: a few minutes, no account, and the result holds for either country, because the core vocabulary is the same. The Spanish vocabulary statistics show how many words each level takes.

For a trip to Mexico, the Mexican Spanish Trip Kit is fifty phrases for Mexico, read with a Mexican voice on devices that have one. The Spanish Trip Kit is the same for Spain. Each is ten phrases a day for five days, and day one works without an account. For the other side of the Atlantic, the Spain vs Latin American Spanish post has 40 more words.

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