Italy, Portugal and, in smaller numbers, from across remainder Europe; Jewish immigration—mainly from Russian Empire and Poland from the 1910s until after World War II—was also significant. English speakers—from Britain and Ireland—were not as numerous, but were a substantial number as well. Influence of indigenous populations in Argentina European settlement decimated Native American populations before 1810, and also during the expansion into Patagonia (after 1870). However, the interaction between Spanish and several of the native languages has left visible traces. Words from Guarani, Quechua and others were incorporated into the local form of Spanish. Some words of Amerindian origin commonly used in Rioplatense Spanish are: From Quechua: guacho or guacha (orig. wakcha "poor person, vagabond, orphan"); the term for the native cowboys of the Pampas, gaucho, may be related. choclo/pochoclo (pop + choclo, from choqllo, corn) -- popcorn in Argentina From Guaraní: pororó—popcorn in Uruguay, Paraguay and some Argentine provinces. See Influences on the Spanish language for a more comprehensive review of borrowings into all dialects of Spanish. Linguistic features Phonology Rioplatense Spanish distinguishes itself from other dialects of Spanish by the pronunciation of certain consonants. Like many other dialects, Rioplatense features yeísmo: the sounds represented by ll (historically the palatal lateral ) and y (historically the palatal approximant ) have fused into one. Thus, in Rioplatense, se cayó "he fell down" is homophonous with se calló "he became silent". This merged phoneme is generally pronounced as a postalveolar fricative, either voiced (as in English measure or the French j) in the central and western parts of the dialect region (this phenomenon is called zheísmo) or voiceless (as in English shine or the French ch), a phenomenon called sheísmo that originated in and around Buenos Aires but has expanded to the rest of Argentina and Uruguay. As in most American dialects, also, Rioplatense Spanish has seseo ( and are not distinguished). That is, casa ("house") is homophonous with caza ("hunt"). Seseo is common to other dialects of Spanish in Latin America, Canarian Spanish and Andalusian Spanish. In popular speech, the fricative has a very strong tendency to become 'aspirated' before another consonant or pause (the resulting sound depending on what the consonant is, although stating it is a voiceless glottal fricative, , would give a clear idea of the mechanism). may also be aspirated at the end of a word and before another word beginning in a vowel, though this