Argentinian Slang: 12 Words You'll Hear in Buenos Aires

My first week in Buenos Aires, I understood maybe a third of what people said to me. Not because my Spanish was bad, but because nobody in Argentina speaks the Spanish that gets taught in classrooms. They drop che into every second sentence, they call their friends idiots affectionately, and the word for job isn't trabajo, it's something you will never find in a textbook.

Here are the twelve words that unlocked the city for me. Meaning, a real line you'll hear, and where each one travels.

The two words that make you sound porteño

Che is the verbal nudge Argentinians open sentences with. Standard Spanish would use oye (hey, listen). In Argentina it works as hey, dude, and come on, depending on the tone.

Che, ¿vamos a tomar algo? (Hey, shall we go grab a drink?)

Boludo is the famous one. Literally an insult, in practice the default word for friend among people who like each other. Said warmly it's mate. Said sharply to a stranger, it's still an insult, so let locals use it on you first.

Dale, boludo, te espero abajo. (Alright, mate, I'll wait for you downstairs.)

Talking about people

Pibe / piba replaces chico/chica (boy, girl) and is used well past childhood. A thirty year old is still un pibe in casual speech.

El pibe del kiosco me fió una birra. (The guy from the corner shop let me pay for a beer later.)

Mina means woman, roughly like chava in Mexico. It's everyday casual, not rude, but it is informal enough that you wouldn't use it in an office.

Esa mina labura en el bar de la esquina. (That woman works at the bar on the corner.)

Work, money and getting around

These three are pure daily vocabulary in Argentina and near useless anywhere else.

Laburo comes from the Italian lavoro and replaces trabajo (work). The verb is laburar.

Mañana no laburo, es feriado. (I'm not working tomorrow, it's a public holiday.)

Mango is a unit of money, used mostly in the negative, from dinero (money).

No tengo un mango hasta el viernes. (I'm broke until Friday.)

Bondi is the city bus, standard colectivo or autobús.

Tomá el bondi 152, te deja en Palermo. (Take the 152 bus, it drops you in Palermo.)

Chaos, laziness and beer

Quilombo is the single most useful Argentinian noun. It means a mess, chaos, a disaster of a situation, from the standard desorden (disorder). A traffic jam is a quilombo. A messy breakup is a quilombo.

El subte está parado, es un quilombo. (The metro is stopped, it's chaos.)

Fiaca is the specific laziness of not wanting to leave the house, from pereza (laziness). You don't feel fiaca, you have it.

Tengo fiaca, quedémonos acá. (I can't be bothered, let's stay here.)

Birra is beer, again straight from Italian, replacing cerveza.

¿Nos tomamos una birra después del laburo? (Shall we have a beer after work?)

Agreeing, insisting, exaggerating

Posta means for real, the truth, from verdad (truth). It works as a statement and as a question.

Te lo juro, posta. (I swear, for real.)

Dale is the all purpose yes, go ahead, come on. Argentinians use it where Spain uses vale.

Dale, nos vemos a las nueve. (Okay, see you at nine.)

Re is an intensifier glued onto adjectives, replacing muy (very). It's informal and slightly young, but everyone uses it.

La película estuvo re buena. (The film was really good.)

The words that change meaning at the border

This is where travelers get burned. Three everyday words elsewhere are loaded in Argentina.

Say agarrar el bondi (grab the bus) instead of coger el bondi and you will never have the problem. Argentinians know foreigners make this slip, and they will absolutely laugh.

Slang is the fastest way to sound like a person rather than a textbook, and the only way it sticks is by saying it out loud in a conversation. That's the point of practising with scenarios in Nativia rather than memorising lists: you use che and dale in a real exchange until they come out automatically.

Test yourself

Pick what each slang word means in the line you're hearing.

Cheat sheet