Xeneizes: Why Boca Juniors Speaks Genoese

In Buenos Aires, Boca Juniors fans call themselves Xeneizes: it is the word zeneixi, "Genoese", in Spanish spelling. The club was born in 1905 in La Boca, the port district where a tight-knit Ligurian community had been settled since the 1830s – so tight-knit that for decades the language of the street was Genoese, and its encounter with Spanish even produced a contact jargon, the "lengua giacumina".

The Genoese of La Boca has nearly faded away; but every Sunday at the Bombonera stadium, its name is still roared by fifty thousand people.