People occasionally ask why the Spanish on this site sounds distinctly Argentine rather than what they call "neutral." The short answer is that there is no such thing as neutral Spanish — and the longer answer says something useful about how Latin America actually works.

But let me start with me, because that is what this post is really about.

Two professional selves, one voice

There is a version of me that spent a decade making herself functionally invisible. When I interpreted diplomatically, my voice was my clients' voice. I mirrored their tone, adapted my register to their audience, and set aside anything in my own style that might colour their message. The one thing I could not change — and would not have wanted to — was my accent. Attempting to mimic someone else's would have been both futile and, frankly, disrespectful.

But when I write, speak in my own name, build a framework, or publish a book, that restraint lifts. Then it is just me: a porteña — someone from Buenos Aires — who happens to work at the intersection of British and Latin American professional life and finds it endlessly interesting.

This site is written in that voice. Which means it is warm, direct, occasionally wry, and unmistakably from the River Plate.

What "Argentine Spanish" actually is — and isn't

A few things worth knowing, because they are relevant beyond linguistics.

What most people call "Argentine Spanish" is more precisely River Plate Spanish — the variety spoken in Buenos Aires and its surrounding region, which has more in common with Uruguayan Spanish than with the Spanish spoken in the rest of Argentina. It is a regional variety, not a national one.

More importantly: every Spanish-speaking country has its own regional variety. Colombian Spanish differs markedly from Mexican Spanish, which differs from Chilean, Peruvian, Dominican, and so on. The idea that there is one correct or neutral form of Spanish — usually invoked when someone wants Buenos Aires to sound more like Mexico City — is a fiction. There are varieties, each as valid as the next.

The River Plate variety has a few distinctive features worth knowing if you work with LatAm professionals:

Voseo — the use of vos instead of tú for the informal second person — sounds Argentine to outsiders but is actually used across roughly two thirds of Latin America, from Uruguay and Paraguay through large parts of Colombia, Venezuela, and Central America. It has a history rooted in colonial deference that eventually outlasted its origins, and it was only formally recognised by the Royal Spanish Academy in 2005. If your LatAm counterpart uses vos, they are not being colloquial or careless — they are speaking their standard.

The distinctive pronunciation of ll and y — which gives Argentine Spanish its characteristic sh sound — is the result of Portuguese, Galician, Italian, and French influences converging in Buenos Aires over the 19th and 20th centuries. It sounds unusual to other Spanish speakers, but it is the product of the same kind of contact and migration that shapes every major city's accent, including London's.

Lunfardo — the slang that emerged from Buenos Aires' criminal underworld in the 19th century and spread through tango into everyday speech — is genuinely Argentine. You will not find it on this site, but you may encounter traces of it in the warmth and rhythm of how a porteño speaks even in professional settings.

On directness — and what it actually signals

The characteristic I hear British professionals comment on most often is the Argentine tendency toward directness. Where a British professional might say "I wonder if you might have a moment," a porteño says "do you have a moment." Where a British email opens with three lines of pleasantries, an Argentine one opens with the point.

This is not rudeness. It is not impatience, exactly. It is closer to a relational signal: in Argentine professional culture, cutting to the point with someone is often a sign that you consider them capable enough to handle it and close enough not to need the scaffolding. The formality is reserved for people you do not yet trust, or situations that demand ceremony.

For a British professional operating in a Slot system — where structure and indirectness carry relational meaning — this can land as abrasive. For an Argentine, the careful indirectness of British professional communication can read as evasiveness or lack of confidence.

Neither reading is correct. Both are legible, once you know the system you are each operating from.

This is who I am and where I come from. The framework I build and the work I do are shaped by it — the decade in diplomatic rooms, yes, but also the particular combination of directness, warmth, and cross-cultural attunement that comes from being this person, from this place, doing this work.

It is nice to meet you. ¡Un placer!