AHC/WI: Large English speaking minority in Argentina

This AHC/WI is about the possibility of a larger English speaking minority in Argentina (10-20%) in the modern times. A POD for this could be anytime after 1900.
 
If you mean immigrants from English speaking countries keeping the language after the second generation, I don't think it's possible. There was a huge amount of Italian immigrants and their children quickly abandoned the Italian language. Today, Italian speakers don't make it to 4% of the population.

What's more likely, and maybe OTL fits the OP in this way (I'm not finding accurate figures), is to have over four million Argentines who are native Spanish speakers, but are fluent in English as a second language.
 
What's more likely, and maybe OTL fits the OP in this way (I'm not finding accurate figures), is to have over four million Argentines who are native Spanish speakers, but are fluent in English as a second language.

This would work. Perhaps an enlightened dictator/junta decides to make it a priority for the population to be fluent/know English. Perhaps with it becoming an official language. You might see English names becoming more common as well, even without it becoming a majority.
 
Huh? Why dictators? English is already a mandatory subject in school and it was democratic governments who made it. The question is how good or bad the teaching is and how fluent high school graduates end up.

There is no official language defined as such in Argentina, although the laws are, obviously, in Spanish. I don't see what's the point of making English an official language, though. There is no cultural nor political reason to do it and having laws in both Spanish and English is just messy.

As for English names, IIRC, that's more of a Peruvian thing. But what's the point? Are we talking about modifying Argentine culture so it better resembles that of the British übermensch instead of the inferior lazy corrupt mediterranean/brown culture?
 
Huh? Why dictators? English is already a mandatory subject in school and it was democratic governments who made it. The question is how good or bad the teaching is and how fluent high school graduates end up.

There is no official language defined as such in Argentina, although the laws are, obviously, in Spanish. I don't see what's the point of making English an official language, though. There is no cultural nor political reason to do it and having laws in both Spanish and English is just messy.

As for English names, IIRC, that's more of a Peruvian thing. But what's the point? Are we talking about modifying Argentine culture so it better resembles that of the British übermensch instead of the inferior lazy corrupt mediterranean/brown culture?

I mean, Argentina is already pretty far removed from any Mediterranean or brown culture as it stands.

I was just trying to imagine/create a more Anglo-Argentina which was more of a combination between Iberian/Italian culture and language with English ones.
 
I mean, Argentina is already pretty far removed from any Mediterranean or brown culture as it stands.

I was just trying to imagine/create a more Anglo-Argentina which was more of a combination between Iberian/Italian culture and language with English ones.
Hey! Two of our cultural mainstays - football and barbecue - are already of British origin!

Anyway, you'd need a huge influx of immigrants, comparable to the Spanish and Italian migrations of the early 20th Century, and I'm not sure how you'd get such emigration out of Britain.
The Confederados move to Argentina instead of Brazil.
Slavery was already outlawed in Argentina by the time the ACW ended and to change that, you'd need to change the liberal nature of the Argentine independentists.
 
Hey! Two of our cultural mainstays - football and barbecue - are already of British origin!

Anyway, you'd need a huge influx of immigrants, comparable to the Spanish and Italian migrations of the early 20th Century, and I'm not sure how you'd get such emigration out of Britain.
Slavery was already outlawed in Argentina by the time the ACW ended and to change that, you'd need to change the liberal nature of the Argentine independentists.

I think adding more Irish might accomplish that goal as well. If you were to have 10 million English/Irish/Scottish immigrants that might tip the scale... a little bit.
 
I think adding more Irish might accomplish that goal as well. If you were to have 10 million English/Irish/Scottish immigrants that might tip the scale... a little bit.

Yeah, but why would English-speaking migrants - Irish or otherwise - not just go to any one of the English-speaking countries / colonies (US, Canada, Australia, NZ, Cape Colony / South Africa) that readily absorbed them? Especially given that there were basically no immigration restrictions at the time.
 
I think you really need 1806 to come off for the British

Without British rule, I think it's hard to establish the circumstances to favor a significant Anglophone culture in the River Plate region.
 
Since this is post 1900, in order to have English be spoken by large minority is to institutionalize mandatory English language instructions from primary up to tertiary by 1910, the height of British economic grip in Argentina, and encourage these Anglophone Argentines to make books, films, periodicals, and others in English and directly compete with existing Spanish one. Supplement it with large-scale immigration from Britain and Ireland and have them penetrate the academe, business, and political sphere immediately.
 
Since this is post 1900, in order to have English be spoken by large minority is to institutionalize mandatory English language instructions from primary up to tertiary by 1910, the height of British economic grip in Argentina, and encourage these Anglophone Argentines to make books, films, periodicals, and others in English and directly compete with existing Spanish one. Supplement it with large-scale immigration from Britain and Ireland and have them penetrate the academe, business, and political sphere immediately.
The English written newspaper The Buenos Aires Herald exists since the 19th century. Films weren't spoken until the 1930s and it would have made no business sense - between the introduction of sound and the lack of dubbing, the Argentine film industry enjoyed a window of opportunity to expand into the Spanish speaking markets which ended with WWII.

As for mandatory English in schools in 1910, it makes no sense. First of all, we all need to remember what was expected of education 100 years ago, when working class children were expected to start working by the age of 14-15.
Elementary school was free and mandatory until the age of 13 as a way to teach the basics, assimilate the immigrants and consolidate a Nation-State. That Nation-State would be a Spanish speaking one, because those are the country's roots. Also, teaching English as a foreign language to the population at large 100 years ago made no economic sense - very few people needed it for their jobs.
High school was for the rich and the upper-middle class only, and it was preparation for university. English, like other foreign languages, could be taught at that stage, and was indeed taught in private British styled schools. But we're talking about a minority of the population here.
University was even more elitist and would remain so until the first two Peron governments.
 
I recall that before the Perron rule, the Argentinian upper class was largely English educated -literally, they went to Oxford and Cambridge and on occasion came back with an English-bien fiancee in tow. So all of the high society, even if they did not always speak English, definitely thought and acted British. Juan Perron, but mostly Evita, of course pushed the old British-raised elite aside and replaced England Nobility Finesse with Argentinian Campesino chick. (You can clearly see this in the evolution of Evita's style over the years)

So what if the English 'way' instead of being discredited during the Perron years and later dictatorships would instead get more democratized and would permeate through all layers of the population. I can imagine that 1) English is pretty universal as a second language and most people, even if they are very poor English speakers could still read and understand any English internet site. 2) there would be a flourishing market for English-written books and Brittish and American movies in their original language. Specialty theatres would perform English plays from Shakespeare to Harold Pinter in their original language. Until 3) the ethnic English or English-speaking minority and their descendants would of course know to speak Spanish, but continue to speak English amongst themselves even after the third and fourth generation. This can have an incubator effect where there would be more immigration from Enflish-speaking countries so that today, a few generations later, you might have a 20% English-speaking minority as per challenge.
 
I recall that before the Perron rule, the Argentinian upper class was largely English educated -literally, they went to Oxford and Cambridge and on occasion came back with an English-bien fiancee in tow. So all of the high society, even if they did not always speak English, definitely thought and acted British. Juan Perron, but mostly Evita, of course pushed the old British-raised elite aside and replaced England Nobility Finesse with Argentinian Campesino chick. (You can clearly see this in the evolution of Evita's style over the years)

So what if the English 'way' instead of being discredited during the Perron years and later dictatorships would instead get more democratized and would permeate through all layers of the population. I can imagine that 1) English is pretty universal as a second language and most people, even if they are very poor English speakers could still read and understand any English internet site. 2) there would be a flourishing market for English-written books and Brittish and American movies in their original language. Specialty theatres would perform English plays from Shakespeare to Harold Pinter in their original language. Until 3) the ethnic English or English-speaking minority and their descendants would of course know to speak Spanish, but continue to speak English amongst themselves even after the third and fourth generation. This can have an incubator effect where there would be more immigration from Enflish-speaking countries so that today, a few generations later, you might have a 20% English-speaking minority as per challenge.

Your post actually gave an idea: suppose Peron doesn't meet Eva - let's say she doesn't land a part in the play where they met in OTL. Instead, Peron ends up hooking up and marrying with some upper class girl of British ascend. It doesn't seem far-fetched, as an Army officer involved in politics would frequent those circles.

If we want this ATL Mrs. Peron to get involved in politics, we can simply go the OTL route: Farrel imprisons Peron due Peron's rise in popularity, the unions organize a protest to set him free and they look at someone more charismatic than them to rally the protesters. Enter ATL Mrs. Peron. She would be criticized by the Argentine pseudo-aristocracy because she isn't acting like she should (ie, like a piece of decoration). But this ATL Mrs. Peron is one of them, unlike Eva, so criticism would be limited and she would provide a bridge between Peronism and the conservative upper class.
This in itself could be worth its own TL.

In any case, regarding the English language, while ATL Mrs. Peron would promote British culture simply by being a popular first lady, learning a foreign language isn't as easy as choosing a different haircut. So I think this still needs the English language to be on demand in the job market. And I don't know if that's the case in the pre-globalization days. How much of a required skill is English for jobs between the 1940-1980s?

There were already academies teaching English in Argentina back then, and there were people who learnt the language. But the POD is about popularizing it. How much useful is that beyond certain professions in that time-frame?
 
My idea was not so much about popularizing as it was about giving the English-speaking immigrants a reason to continue using English amongst each other, even in the third generation and beyond. With pre-Perronist Argentina being so pro-British, it is easy to have a 5-10% of the population being of English origin. From nannies to Liverpool mechanics that came along with the Liverpool-built locomotives. What was missing was a reason for an English-speaking mother to raise their Argentinian-born kid in English , or at least bilingual. And a reason for said kid to continue using English in private even if many of his friends speak Spanish and Spanish only. Having an British or just English-language subculture that is encouraged rather then frowned upon could do the trick, butterflying away Evita was just one idea, but it could work..
 
First, it's not easy to have a 5-10% of the population of British origin. That's a lot of people and not only the British didn't emigrate that much, they also had better choices to emigrate in North America due the language.

Second, well, that's just not the way immigration works. The children and specially grandchildren of immigrants tend to loose their grandparents language and assimilate. It may work, to a point, in close communities - the Welsh in Patagonia, who still have people speaking Welsh and maybe (and that's just a maybe) the Chinese who immigrated in the last few decades. But close communities also tend to be small communities, which goes against a significant portion of the Argentine households speaking in English indoors.
 
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