Scooping Argentina

The first-time visitor to Buenos Aires is faced with piles of steak, pretty people, 11 p.m. dinnertimes, dog-poop-mined sidewalks -- and a Spanish that's not the language you learned in class with the teacher who wasn't, let's be honest, exactly fluent herself. Rioplatense, as they call it, bolts Spanish words to unique verbal forms and varnishes it all with an Italian rhythm and a unique slang known as lunfardo. Luckily, former Dow Jones Buenos Aires correspondent Taos Turner has ginned up Scooping Argentina, a website of videos untangling Argentine politics, scandals, and language. In a series of short videos, Laura Rajchman -- Argentina's answer to the St. Pauli Girl -- demystifies such key Argentine concepts as afanar, zafar, and most importantly, quilombo (something between a whorehouse and a big friggin' mess). The videos are also on iTunes, under "Scooping Argentina."

Scooping Argentina Official site]