Argentina: Language & Religion

Spanish is Argentina's official language and the first language of the vast majority of the population. The Argentine variety, known as Rioplatense Spanish, is distinguished by voseo, the use of vos rather than tu for the informal second person, and by pronunciation patterns often attributed to the heavy Italian immigration of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

Alongside Spanish, several indigenous languages continue to be spoken within their communities, including Quechua in the northwest and Mapudungun among Mapuche communities in Patagonia. Since 2004, Guarani has held co-official status alongside Spanish in the northeastern province of Corrientes. Waves of European immigration also left linguistic traces, with Italian, German, and other languages still spoken among some descendant communities.

Roman Catholicism has historically been the majority religion, a legacy of Spanish colonization, though the share of Argentines identifying as Catholic has declined in recent decades alongside growth in evangelical Protestant congregations and a rising number of people reporting no religious affiliation. Argentina also has one of Latin America's largest Jewish communities, concentrated mainly in Buenos Aires. In 2013, Argentine cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio was elected Pope Francis, becoming the first pope from the Americas.