Fútbol en la Boca (40 K)

The Porteño
(The Inhabitant of Buenos Aires)
The inhabitant of Buenos Aires is known as Porteño due to the decisive influence the port played in the development of the city and of the country in general.
They are considered to be cultured and, to a certain point, arrogant, strongly nostalgic and sensitive, although the outstanding feature of their personality is the pride they feel to be natives of the city. They are big talkers and are capable of chatting and discussing passionately for hours about their favourite subjects: sports, mainly football, politics, and current issues, over a cup of coffee.
They love to read newspapers and magazines. This allows them to be updated and find subjects for their discussions since they add their own point of view, giving their words a certain tinge of philosophy.
They give friendship an almost religious feeling and they consider the expression to make a gauchada as the key to open the coldest heart, because the gauchada is a true institution in Buenos Aires and to ask someone to make a gauchada is of course something more than asking for a favour.
They like to look and to be looked at and the man always has on the tip of his tongue, an ingenious and appropriate compliment for a woman that passes by. Women take care of the smallest personal detail, even when shopping.
They all have night habits. Bars, pizzerias, restaurants and some bookstores downtown remain open until the wee hours of the morning and the discos just start to fill up at two in the morning.
The porteño, of quick and sharp answers when attacked or just mentioned, has a peculiar and colourful form of expressing himself in Spanish: the " lunfardo ", jargon that deforms Spanish and other languages spoken by the immigrants.
It had its origin in low and marginal parts of the city although today this use has extended to a greater or lesser degree to almost all social levels. It is normal to hear it spoken in the streets, in the words of the tangos, in the media and one can even read it in the works by the best writers.
The lunfardo is a dynamic language; it is alive and constantly nurtured by incidental expressions using a more or less established language.
The porteño often turns the word in such a way that that it becomes difficult to understand: they invert the order of the syllables, they say, feca for café (coffee), jermu for mujer (woman), grone for negro (black), rioba for barrio (neighbourhood).
In lunfardo, minas are women, tipos are men, and guita is money. To call a tacho is to request a taxi and of course, the tachero is the driver; to take a bondi is to get on a bus or colectivo. If they offer him a faso they are inviting him a cigarette, on the other hand, if they invite someone to morfar they are inviting him for lunch. The policeman is called botón and chorro the thief who instead of stealing, afana.
Like these, an infinite number of words are used as a unique language on specific occasions, leaving the listener without understanding anything. In Buenos Aires it is wise to pay attention trying to understand and it is advisable not to use terms without learning lunfardo, because many have more than one meaning, and this could lead to misunderstandings.