Languages by generation

Many younger people here (I mean 30 years & less) speak English. They often also have smatterings of other languages too, most commonly their hereditary language (Italian/German/Polish) or Portugese - remember that Brazil is nearby & that's a favourite beach holiday destination for most Argentinians.

No, it is not a mandatory subject in the public schools here however it is a popular elective subject. The reason that there's an age difference between the amount of people who do & those who do not speak English here is historic.

After a very turbulent 50 years, democracy returned to Argentina in 1983. This meant a liberal policy prevailed towards foreign influences as the domestic market reopened. Scholastically the curriculum expanded & new technologies began slowly to appear. BA had previously only 1 state-run TV station. By 1990 they were also 3 privately owned TV stations (which were partially dependent upon advertising sponsorship ... a new industry!) & many, many more privately-owned radio stations.

 The introduction of foreign music, particularly pop music was voraciously adopted by the youth. Spanish & Italian songs were popular immediately but many of the hit songs' lyrics were in English. Around his same time, the wealthier Argentine families who had managed to live abroad during the preceding period of the 'Dirty War' from 1975-1983 (the time of the last military junta) returned here to rebuild their businesses but many of their university aged children stayed away for tertiary education before returning to Argentina. While most of those students were in either Spain or Italy, the pop music by that time was becoming largely dominated by English lyrics.

There were no TV programmes in English here until 2002, with a rapid expansion of cable TV services available, supported by affordable satelite technology & the economic crash of the local currency making foreign investment such good value for a few years then. With the arrival of cable tv with programming in original language, there was a competitive expansion in the local cinemas also who - gratefully - took the policy to maintain all foreign films in the original language also! Foreign childrens' films are dubbed into Castillano for the local market.
Now there was English on all electronic media streams.

Then with economic growth, so came the computers. For many years, Spanish was the 4th most popular language on the internet (largely fueled by the Hispanic population in the USA) but with each year, more & more young Argentine students were using the English websites equally - because they can follow them! Now in this past decade it has become obvious that English is the primary language of the web.

And yes, as a side effect, the beautiful classical language of the Castiglia region in Spain that is the basis for the local Porteno lingua franca spoken in BA is fast being corrupted by English based slang : los jeans e.g.

1 in 3 secondary school students here now study English through to graduation. It's the profusion of portable technology that feeds the interest in comprehending a fair level of English after graduation is over though :)