The jargon used by some Italian immigrants in Latin American countries is known as cocoliche , combining notions of their language of origin with elements of Spanish. The concept is usually used in Argentina and Uruguay .
Cocoliche emerged in the 19th century from the mixture of Italian dialects with the Spanish language . Between the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century , a large percentage of the population of the Argentine capital came from Italy . The alternation of terms belonging to their native dialects and others from the language of the host country led to the development of this jargon.
The name cocoliche arose in the Creole circus of the Podesta brothers , where there was a character called Cocolicchio . This in turn was inspired by Antonio Cuculicchio , a Calabrian immigrant who was part of the company working as a laborer .
Although cocoliche little by little disappeared as everyday slang, several of its terms were incorporated into the Buenos Aires lunfardo. Today, words such as “bagayo” (from bagaglio ), “chanta” ( ciantapuffi ), “chicato” ( ciecato ), “facha” ( faccia ), “mina” ( femmina ) and “pibe” ( pivello) are still used. ). An expression like “Kid, are you small? I don't understand how someone with your appearance can come out with something that is a bagayo” , in this framework, it includes elements of lunfardo but has its roots in cocoliche.
Cocoliche belongs to a group of languages called pidgin , an English term that designates those simplified languages, created and used by members of a community who do not share the mother tongue nor have they learned another language at a sufficient level to use it instead of their own. . Throughout history, this type of fusion has occurred in many cases, especially in commercial relationships and in colonies where slavery was used to cover the workforce in a forced manner.
A pidgin, and in this case cocoliche, is nothing more than a simplified code that does not give rise to complex or very precise communication, since there is no adequate knowledge of both languages on either side. Furthermore, their structures are constructed almost arbitrarily, often due to the sound similarity that some terms have.
In other words, the cocoliche was formed by the need that Italian immigrants at the end of the 19th century had to communicate with the inhabitants of the City of Buenos Aires, lacking sufficient knowledge to speak completely in Spanish and as a result of not find in Argentines a satisfactory level of Italian.
For this reason, it is not the incorporation of a series of terms and structures meticulously supervised by the Royal Spanish Academy, but rather a desperate measure that went down in history anecdotally and left its mark on the Spanish of South America. Needless to say, knowing these words means we cannot travel to Italy and get around easily, especially since most of them were misinterpreted by Argentinians or are not used in the Italian language, but in certain specific dialects .
Just as it happens with the terms that we incorporate from other languages, although in many cases the mixture does not occur at the cocoliche level, it is important to highlight the colossal distance that exists between the form and use of a borrowed word and its characteristics in the language. original.
Cocoliche is also called something that shows an extravagant or bad taste combination . For example: “Paulina is a cocoliche: she always dresses ridiculously,” “This party is going to be a cocoliche.”