TRES CULTURAS SPANISH BLOG - Issues About the Spanish Language

LATEST POSTS

To write a comment on any of our posts, just click on this link: http://tresculturasspanish.net/

OR Read in Spanish at http://asuntosdelalenguacastellana.wordpress.com

---

The Spanish personal pronouns tú and vos

Many modern American Spanish language varieties use the personal pronoun vos instead of tú when referring to the grammatical second person. The pronoun Vos is the predominant, if not the only form used by an enormous amount of Spanish speakers in many countries. This usage is especially evident in ordinary day to day oral language exchange.

The Spanish verb forms experience changes in their structures: Vos users say, example, vos tenés or vos sabés instead of tú tienes or tú sabes.

The pronoun vos is used in countries such as Argentina, Chile, Colombia, Uruguay and all the Central American countries with the exception of Panama. Speakers in some countries make a selective use of this pronoun. In Chile and Colombia for example, tú is also used. On the other hand, vos is used by everyone in Argentina or Uruguay in daily speech.

The historical reasons that gave origin to this language phenomenon are far too complex and convoluted to be examined in detail in a short post like this. However, I must add that it's very important for all users of any Spanish language variety, to have a clear understanding of the basic nature of it.

Firstly, the pronoun vos is as legitimate as tú since it's used by a vast amount of speakers in many countries of the new world.

In the second place, contrary to the official position of Spanish language academies, the pronoun vos should be taught alongside tú as synonym structure for the second person singular in all modern Spanish grammar texts. Doing this would not only contribute to enrich the Spanish grammar as taught in the school system, but it would - more importantly - recognize a language usage that some people pretend that it doesn't exist.

For students of Spanish as a second language it's extremely important to know about this language aspect, especially in circumstances that require them to be in Spanish speaking regions or countries where vos is used.

Posted by Luis Pinel June 1 '08 he asp

---

iThe aspiration or loss of /s/ syllable final in spoken Spanish on or loss of /s/

The aspiration or loss of the /s/ sound in a final position of a word is a natural phonological feature found in many varieties of Iberian and American Spanish.

This language phenomenon is marked by an aspiration or dropping of the /s/ when speakers articulate structures like los niños, las casas or las tiendas grandes. An approximate phonological transcription for these structures may be: loh niñoh, lah casah and lah tiendah grandeh.

I've heard quite often people commenting about this issue in a negative way. Some of them think that some native Spanish speakers aspirate the /s/ due to pure linguistic laziness and that such speakers must make an effort to correct their speech. Whenever I can I point out to anyone making this type of comments, that this phonological phenomenon - like all other aspects of language - is neither wrong nor right. That speakers resorting to this kind of linguistic structures are just making use of language in a way suitable for them.

At the end of the day what really matters for speakers of a language quite independently from the conventional features such as standard pronunciation patterns, is that the linguistic structures being used in any given situation must be socially accepted in the setting where these speakers are using such structures.

Thus it doesn't really matter whether some Spanish speakers say lah casah instead of las casas as long as they are mutually intelligible.

In the language classroom, however, students must be taught to pronounce the standard /s/ whenever necessary in their spoken Spanish.

Posted by Luis Pinel May 4 '08

---

Letter ñ presence in Spanish language domain names

Last year I wrote a post about letter ñ presence in Spanish language domain names on the internet. I was at elcastellano.org/noticias website today and I read an article about this same topic, which I think adds to what I've already written.

The article in Spanish at elcastellano.org/noticias - by Luis Viviant - reports that Argentina is trying to follow the example set by Chile, Spain and Mexico as major Spanish speaking countries that have already incorporated the letter ñ into their domain names.

I found out in the article, that Chile was the first Spanish speaking country that introduced this letter in 2005 in their domain names. I clarify this here as when I wrote the post that I'm referring to above, I thought it was Spain the first country that did so.

In his article Luis Viviant writes that the initiative for the incorporation of letter ñ into the Argentinean domain names was taken by a private news company (Grupo Clarin). This is a great initiative as it motivates the public to participate on issues that affect their daily language usage.

I said in my first post on this topic, that letter ñ is an integral part of the Spanish language. I consider extremely important that all domain names written in Spanish must use the proper script and graphic symbols of this language. It's very encouraging to see media organizations of the Spanish speaking countries trying to correct inappropriate language usage.

There is no valid reason for not incorporating the letter ñ and all the other Spanish graphic symbols into all the domain names written in the Castilian language in all the other Spanish speaking countries that still use inappropriate spelling system.

Posted by Luis Pinel April 19 '08

---

Ladino: A Judeo Spanish-Iberian language preserved for more than five centuries

I've always been aware of the existence of Ladino or also known as Judeo Spanish, but it was only today that I managed to have a first contact not only with its written but also its spoken forms in a simultaneous way. And it couldn't have been in a more magnificent fashion than through music…and a beautiful voice.

Today I bought two compact disks by Yasmin Levy. One is called Romance and Yasmin and the other Mano Suave. The music and the lyrics are a heavenly affair, as its instrumentation and Yasmin's voice are soothing and bewitching.

On the other hand, every song is for me an exploration of how late fifteen century Castilian Spanish may have sounded in the streets of Toledo, Granada or Seville. It's like going back in time!

A quick glance at the song's written lyrics has allowed me to notice that from the etymological point of view the language (I'm talking about some simple language structures found here) seems pretty much the same as any modern Spanish variety. I could be walking in San Salvador, Madrid or Lima and if I met a person speaking to me in Ladino there would only be some little trouble in communicating in a casual ordinary manner if I had to talk to them, or them talking to me.

This is of course my first impressions. I'd have to do a proper study of all the structural aspects of this language in order to have a clearer idea of its intrinsic nature.

In the meantime I searched on the internet and I found at the website orbitlat.com some essential reading about basic features on the history and nature of Judeo Spanish. A very interesting point here is that Ladino - as far as I know - is the only language derived from Spanish, which has also been written in a script different to the Latin alphabet.

The language is also known by many other names and has several dialects spoken in many countries. These dialects also have a great influence from Portuguese regarding words and grammatical structures according to orbilat.com, above.

Ladino is a Spanish-Iberian language that deserves to be preserved, taught and learned by any person interested in language studies, but more so, by all native Spanish and Portuguese speaking people as it can teach us quite a few interesting aspects in relation to the nature of Spanish and Portuguese as the two major languages originated from the Iberian Peninsula.

Judeo Spanish has a very complex and varied history. That fact seems to be reflected in the grammatical, lexical and phonological features of the language that I have perused today in a very brief manner.

I intend to study and learn more about this charming Spanish-Iberian language variety.

PS: I may also be walking in Sao Paulo or Lisbon and speak Portuguese with a Ladino speaker without much problem in our mutual understanding.

Posted by Luis Pinel March 30 '08

---

Read excellent posts & comments on the blog Hablas español from the BBC

The BBC website has an excellent page named Los blogs de BBC Mundo. Obviously all the blogs are written in Spanish, although some commentaries are sometimes written in English.

There are several blogs dealing with the topic of languages. The more interesting blog for me is Hablas español, because of its focus on issues about the Spanish language, which is of course the subject of my blog here. However, Hablas español is mainly focussed on issues related to Spanish speakers living in the United States.

The blog Hablas español is a first class resource to get to know about the views of Spanish speaking people living in the US on issues connected to their language and culture. It's also an excellent site for students learning Spanish to practice their reading skills with the aid of real language usage by native Spanish speakers.

As commentaries are not corrected from the grammatical point of view by the moderators of the blog, students need to be aware that there may be spelling and grammatical errors in the comments.

The blog´s posts are written in standard Spanish by BBC staff.

I'm adding the BBC with its Hablas español blog to my Blogroll here.

Posted by Luis Pinel March 9 '08

---

Some thoughts about the origins and meanings of the term bizarro

Finding out about the origin and meanings of words is one of the areas of language study that I enjoy most, mainly because every time I analyze a particular term, I achieve a better knowledge about its hidden aspects. This also provides me with a better understanding of the nature of language in general. A friend of mine asked me last week if I could provide him with some information about the etymology and meanings of the Spanish term bizarro compared with its English counterpart bizarre.

According to the Macquarie Dictionary, the word bizarre is an adjective used in English with the meanings of
singular in appearance, style or general character; whimsically strange; odd.
It says that the term comes from the Spanish bizarro (meaning brave) and that this Castilian word in turn comes from the Basque bizar (meaning beard).

On the other hand, the Pequeño Larousse Ilustrado dictionary, says that the Spanish adjective bizarro comes from the Italian bizzarro (meaning singular). It's mainly used in Spanish with the meanings of brave, chivalrous, generous, and splendid. This source warns that is inappropriate to use this term in Spanish with the meanings of extravagant, fantastic or capricious.

An online search for the word bizarro at The Royal Spanish Language Academy website gave a similar definition to the one found above. It still says that the word originated from the Italian bizzarro, but with the meaning of irascible.

How the word bizarre came to adopt its meanings in English is a mystery to me. From the examination here so far it seems that English adopted the Spanish word structure and the Italian meaning (i.e. singular). However, it seems very curious to me that the word bizarro is defined in the Spanish dictionary as coming from Italian whereas the English one attributes it to Basque.

If the terms bizarro and bizarre come from Basque, the most logical meaning for both Spanish and English words, would simply be barba (Spanish for beard) and beard, respectively, and they would only be used as nouns. How Italian came to use bizzarro, is also open to investigation.

Regarding the words' meanings in Spanish, it's quite difficult to ascertain wether they are based on the Basque or Italian terms.

It may be that the Italian usage of this word with the meaning of singular may have influenced the way the Spanish and English terms are used.

PS. I searched for the word bizarro on the internet and found that there is also a fictional character named Bizarro !

Posted by Luis Pinel March 1 '08

---

The pronoun vosotros and its verbal structures deserved to be used by all native Spanish speakers

Two days ago I wrote a post in Spanish about the personal pronoun vosotros and the verb structures involved with its usage in the Spanish language.

The pronoun vosotros and the verb structures connected with it are used in the Castilian varieties of Spain only. However, all native Spanish speakers learn to use all these language aspects during their formal education process provided by the education systems in all the Spanish speaking countries.

I won't deal in a short post like this with the causes that gave origin to the lack of usage of vosotros and its verbal structures by by most native Spanish speakers.

The subject pronouns that are normally listed for the conjugation of the Spanish verbs are: yo, tú, él/ella/usted, nosotros/nosotras, vosotros/vosotras and ellos/ellas/ustedes.

There are six conjugation forms which attach to each of these subject pronouns. To illustrate, the conjugations for the verb amar (to love) in present indicative are: amo, amas, ama, amamos, amáis, aman. The structure amáis corresponds to vosotros/vosotras - the second person plural subject pronoun (used in informal settings). And this is the form that is not used by native Spanish speakers except those from Spain. To make up for this, the vast majority of speakers use ustedes - the third person plural subject pronoun (used in formal settings by all native Spanish speakers). Thus for the verb in reference here, the greatest bulk of native users employ the form aman for both second and third person plural.

The pronoun vosotros and its verb structures are well worth to consider for bringing back into usage by native Spanish speakers that don't use them in all the modern Spanish language varieties outside Spain. Here are three sensible reasons:

1. The wealth of a language is mainly judged by the amount of language resources available to it. The pronoun vosotros and its verb structures are integral part of the Spanish language. They contribute to enrich the written as well as the spoken structures of this language.

2. Using these structures gives more precision and clarity to language usage. Why using the form for the third person plural to mean the second person? The pronoun vosotros and its verb structures already exist in the language and from a purely linguistic point of view there's no reason why they shouldn't be used by all native speakers.

3. From my personal perspective, I think that verbal forms involved with the pronoun vosotros, give Spanish a refined and charming phonological effect. Let’s consider, for example, the following verses by Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz…Hombres necios que acusáis a la mujer sin razón, sin saber que sois la ocasión de lo mismo que culpáis.

It's important to mention here, that from the cultural point of view, it may be very hard - although not impossible - to reintroduce the usage of the structures examined in this post in the daily spoken and written language of native Spanish speakers who haven't used them for centuries, namely the users of Spanish in the New World.

Any effort to make a successful reintroduction of a generalized usage of these structures by native Spanish speakers that don't currently use them, can only be achieved in the long term by conscious effort by speakers acting as individuals and through educational and cultural intervention.

The pronoun vosotros and verb structures used with it, are languishing and in peril of being relegated forever as language anachronism in the majority of Spanish language varieties. I'm of the firm opinion that these structures are a great linguistic resource and therefore they deserved to be saved, by being used both orally and in their written form by all native Spanish speakers…I have already started to do so: ¿Y vosotros qué pensáis?

Posted by Luis Pinel Feb 24 '08

---

The lexical wealth of the Spanish language

In my long experience of teaching Spanish, I have witnessed the amazed reaction of students learning this language whenever the issue of synonyms and the abundant number of idiomatic expressions with which Spanish is endowed arises. I'd like deal in this post with the richness of the lexical or vocabulary aspect of Spanish.

The Castilian language possesses a very rich array of lexical terms particularly in relation to nouns and verb forms. I always like to mention in my Spanish classes, for example how the noun pig, can be said in Spanish using a large variety of synonyms. Thus the words cerdo, puerco, marrano, cochino, tunco, cuche, chancho, are some of the words used to name a pig in Spanish.

In the verbal area, the language of Cervantes also possesses a very ample variety of terms from which to choose. There are also in this category abundant quantities of synonyms.

This is a very important feature of Spanish as it contributes to make language usage interesting, entertaining and varied.

The vast amount of synonyms has given Spanish a literature characterized by an elegant and florid language usage immortalized in gold script by giants of Castilian language letters such as Miguel de Cervantes, Gabriel García Márquez, Federico García Lorca, Miguel Ángel Asturias, Calderón de la Barca, Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, Rubén Darío, Claribel Alegría, Jorge Luís Borges, Rosario Ferré, Nicolás Guillén, Julio Cortázar…

From the practical point of view, the availability of a large amount of synonyms may seem an insurmountable obstacle for the students of Spanish, due to the extra amount of words that they need to learn. However, after the initial learning stages and a constant exposure to written and spoken Spanish and especially when the students are becoming more fluent in the language, they realize that this feature, rather than a hindrance, is a great contributor to the goal of achieving full language competence in Spanish.

Posted by Luis Pinel Feb 17 '08

---

A new Pan Hispanic Spanish Grammar to be launched by language academies

The website elcastellano.org reports that 22 Spanish language academies (from the Spanish speaking world) are meeting in Segovia, Spain, in a conference to coordinate their work preparing for a new grammar of the Spanish language.

The website adds that the planned grammatical work will be the first since 1931.

Standard Spanish is a language that has maintained its uniformity due to the presence of language academies, which take as their role to regulate standard language usage.

Historically, that regulatory role has been taken by the Real Academia de la Lengua (The Royal Spanish Language Academy). In recent times there has been a movement - in all the Spanish speaking countries (or countries with Spanish language academies) - to make that regulatory role universal. This implies the active participation of all the academies.

Spanish is the forth most important language of the world; it possesses a vast language corpus with almost an equally vast amount of language variation spread in the large Spanish speaking population of the New World. Most modern Spanish speakers live in the American continent; because of this fact, the academies from that part of the world, need to make sure that the language usage in their particular country is thoroughly studied and included in any Pan Hispanic Spanish grammar.

A new and universal grammatical guide for the Spanish language will be of great utility for maintaining the unity of Standard Spanish. However, a more important role for the New World Spanish academies, would be to accelerate the inclusion of all the lexical terms (and some grammatical structures) of any origin which are still not incorporated into the academies' dictionaries.

The language academies, apart from regulating the unity of standard Spanish, must ensure that the linguistic wealth of the Spanish language is preserved for the future. Thus, all lexical terms used by sizable groups of Spanish speakers must be registered in the form of dictionaries by each Spanish language academy.

Posted by Luis Pinel Feb 1 '08

---

The indelible presence of the Nahuatl language in modern Spanish

Nahuatl is a language from Mexico, belonging to the Uto-Aztecan group of languages. It was the language of the Aztecs, as well as of the Pipil, an ancient Mexican people that settled in the western area of what is now El Salvador. Nahuatl has made an indelible mark into modern Spanish, especially to the varieties of this language as spoken in Mesoamerica.

Nahuatl is still spoken by more than two and a half million people and used as a cultural vehicle, particularly in Mexico.

Reading from the archives of elcastellano.org/noticias I found a very interesting article about the join publication of a Diccionario del náhuatl en el español de México (Dictionary of Nahuatl terms in Mexican Spanish) by the Government of the Federal District of Mexico and the UNAM (The Autonomic National University of Mexico).

The article at the site referred to here is by Juan Solis from El Universal. It reports that the dictionary incorporates more than 2000 Nahuatl lexical and toponymic terms. It adds that according to the UNAM academic Carlos Montemayor, the coordinator in charge of the dictionary's publication, the new lexical book also includes Nahuatl names and botanical terms.

This Dictionary of Nahuatl terms in Mexican Spanish is a great achievement towards registering, studying, maintaining and preserving for future generations the linguistic wealth that the ancient Native American tongues such as Nahuatl have given to the Spanish language.

PS. To learn more about the nature of Nahuatl, visit http://www.omniglot.com/writing/nahuatl.htm

Posted by Luis Pinel Jan 27 '08

---

The terms 'Latino' and 'Latino Spanish'

The Spanish language term latino ('Latino') has been used and abused for quite a while. Words like these can become widely popular and used very frequently, in most cases without the users making a little effort to find out about the true nature of such terms.

The word latino is used in Spanish as a short form of latinoamericano - a Latin American - i.e. a person from a Latin American country. Thus, in Spanish the term is used in a correct manner. However, the usage of this term in English is incorrect as there is a proper translation for the word latino into this language: Latin. In any case whenever there is a need to refer to the people from Latin America is more appropriate to name them by their own nationalities: Mexican, Brazilian, Chilean, Costa Rican, etc, or collectively as Latin Americans.

The term Latin American is appropriately used for distinguishing the people from the New World as not coming from Anglo America. The term is properly used to relate to this cultural aspect. Latin American is a term that has come to mean someone who is non Anglo American, and is therefore quite appropriately used to cover anyone who comes from a Latin American country independently of what language they speak.

Referring to Spanish speaking people from Spanish speaking countries of Latin America as 'Hispanics' is not only wrong and inappropriate - it hardly means anything at all - it's better to use always the term Latin American as it's more meaningful and culturally appropriate.

The term Latino - as used quite often in English and applied to language or people - is wrong, inappropriate and lacking in real meaning and because of this its usage should be avoided.

Labeling any perceived type of language as 'Latino Spanish' or even Latin Spanish doesn't mean anything, as the name for the Spanish from the New World is American Spanish. Misleading labels lack academic validity. Thus the name American Spanish must be used when referring to the varieties of this language as coming from the American continent.

Posted by Luis Pinel Jan 18 '08

---

Digitalized libraries from Spanish speaking countries are great online treasures

As a Spanish language teaching specialist I need to always be surrounded by books, magazines, newspapers... written material of any kind related with or about the Spanish language, preferably in Spanish.

Before the advent of the digital era, most written documents were only available as hard copies, i.e. printed on paper. Nowadays, lots of cultural institutions from everywhere - especially libraries - are bringing their written treasures online for the benefit of humanity.

Today I navigated the august pages of the Biblioteca Nacional de España (The National Library of Spain) and found to my surprise, that they still haven't put their books online; however they say on the website, that they're planning to do so soon. Nevertheless, they have a hemeroteca digital which includes newspapers and magazines from Spain that were first published the 1800's.

Also today I visited the Biblioteca Ayacucho. Here there are a number of treasures from Spanish and Hispanic American literature, in PDF format, which can be downloaded for free. I downloaded the book Comentarios Reales by Garcilaso de la Vega from this website. This is a classic book that I've been searching for a long time. I finally found it and it didn't cost me a cent!

I will be adding here some more 'bibliotecas digitales' and other sites containing digitalized written material as I get to find them. The only point of concern is that getting to find these websites and exploring what they offer (and writing a post like this), is consuming my time as if there isn't other things to do; such as taking a break from the pc, which I must… :)

Some last words though...I have added these two magnificent websites to my blogroll here. Enjoy!

Posted by Luis Pinel Jan 7 '08

---

The intrinsic value of speaking other languages and of being bilingual

A few days ago I read an article in The Age connected to the importance of languages in general and second language learning, in particular, for individuals and people. The article also says that 2008 has been declared the International Year of Languages by the United Nations.

A language of any type, especially a natural one - i.e. a language learnt and spoken natively by people - is an amazing tool for creating and exchanging meaning, with no parallel in any other area of human activity involved in the civilization process.

A language, then, as a special way of organizing thought in the spoken and written modes and as a communication tool is a very important human feature that deserves to be learned, or at least be studied by non natives of that language. Reading 'Empires of the Word a Language History of the World' by Nicholas Ostler has helped me to understand these aspects in a clearer manner.

In Ostler's book there are detailed descriptions of the role that languages - used either as native or second mean of communication - have played in shaping human history since the most ancient of times until now. Since the very early beginnings, individuals and social groups, living in normal conditions, have taken as a goal to learn the languages of their neighbors as a way of conducting trade, commerce and diplomacy or simply for showing goodwill to speakers of other tongues.

In modern times people still learn languages following similar paths as the ones described above. However, they also learn a second (or third or forth…) language for fun, namely, the great intellectual satisfaction that is obtained by communicating in the same language with people whose native tongue is different to ours'.

I became a bilingual person in my youth. Now I can exchange ideas in at least five other languages. Nevertheless, I consider myself a truly bilingual person due to the fact that English and Spanish are the languages that I use on a daily basis.

Both Spanish and English are essential parts of my identity now. In both languages I find an immense array of intellectual satisfaction. I can move in the two worlds with ease. This is something of great value if we take into consideration that each of these languages are repositories of vast bodies of language and knowledge to keep a letters' lover attached to them forever.

I don't know any longer what the feeling of being a monolingual person is. What I do know however, it's that knowing other languages and being fully bilingual is a feeling which is not only unique; it's humanizing to the highest degree.

Posted by Luis Pinel Jan 5 '08

---

'I love chocolate' …I know that, but do you know about the origin of the word chocolate?

In my professional teaching experience it's very common to find out that many students are often unaware about lots of the aspects relating to the nature of the Spanish language vocabulary when they start their learning process.

For example, they often find it surprising that a Spanish word like chocolate or tomate comes from Pre-Columbian languages. Most of them tend to assume that terms like these are naturally derived from English words; so when I explain to them that these structures come from Native American languages they take it as a very new fact to them.

All the native tongues from the American continent - either dead or still in current use - have made an outstanding contribution to the enrichment of the Spanish language. There is a vast amount of words which have already been officially included into Spanish dictionaries; however, there still are an even larger amount of them which are still waiting to be incorporated into such dictionaries.

These language structures are commonly referred to as Americanisms. All these terms come mainly from Amerindian (or Pre-Columbian) languages, which have found a path into spoken and written varieties of Spanish and are generally used by native Spanish speakers in their daily language. Because of this factor, they must be included into dictionaries as a matter of fact.

What it really matters from the linguistic perspective it's that the terms to which we are making reference here, are vernacular items belonging to the lexicon of a regional or national group of native Spanish speakers; thus there is no need to apply other considerations in order for them to be included into any particular type of dictionary which may be released by a publishing house or for the words to be admitted by a Spanish language academy.

The main purpose of any language dictionary is to provide a complete list of all the words which are actually used by any sizeable amount of its speakers.

Posted by Luis Pinel Dec 29 '07

---

Spanish to be reintroduced as school subject in the Philippines

The website elcastellano.org/noticia informs that Spanish is to make a return to the Philippines' school system. It says that the announcement was made by President Gloria Arroyo in a visit to Spain at the beginning of this month.

The news item gives a historical detail of the main aspects related to the Philippine's connection with Spanish language and culture.

It says that the decision to reintroduce Spanish to the education system of the Philippines will contribute to bring back this country to the historical roots it shares with the rest of Spanish speaking countries of the world, in particular those from Latin America.

Since the time it was discovered and colonized by Spain in 1521, Spanish became for 350 years the official language of this nation. The Philippines was part of the last colonies of Spain which it lost in 1898 in the Spanish-American war. After independence in 1946, Spanish was reinstated in the school curriculum but it was withdrawn from it during the Marcos' era and has since then lost its place in the educational system of the Philippines.

Despite the fact of being a Spanish possession for such a long time, the Castilian tongue didn't become the main communication vehicle for the majority of the people of the Philippines, who remained using their vernacular languages, which were nonetheless permeated by Spanish especially in the lexical area.

The historical details for the Spanish language not to have taken a firm hold in the Philippines are too complex to be examined in a short post like this.

It's worthy to note that this news item also mentions that eighty percent of the Philippines' historical documents are written in Spanish. This is a fact that I didn't know until now.

Spanish is a language closely connected to the history and culture of the Philippines. The teaching of this language at all levels of the educational system in that country will make a great contribution for its people - among other things - to know, to study and research in their original source more than three and half centuries of its past which is written in Spanish.

Posted by Luis Pinel Dec 27 '07

---

Two Pre-Roman phonological features adopted permanently by Spanish

The trilled (very marked and rolled) sound of the combination rr as found in perro, barro or tierra and in letter r as in dormir or tener, is one of the most difficult - if not the most difficult - sound encountered by most people learning Spanish as a second language.

Well, I must tell my students from now on not to blame the ancient Romans for their predicament, as this particular sound was brought into the developing Castilian tongue by Basque language speakers in medieval times.

I always thought of the trilled r as a feature of the Latin language that was inherited by Spanish. But just last night in 'La Página del Idioma Español ' at elcastellano.org, I read an article by Sergio Zamora in which he names this sound and the dropping of the phoneme represented by f in ancient Latin words but since then substituted by a silent h, in words like harina, hierro and humo, as two features of the Basque language adopted by Spanish very early in its gestation process.

Zamora points out that the suffixes rro, [rra, rre, etc] and the absence of the phoneme for f, were two clear traits of Basque before they were transferred as phonological features of Castilian Spanish.

Basque is an ancient Non-Roman language that has left its imprint in these two phonological properties still present in all modern Spanish varieties. These two language aspects made a significant contribution towards distinguishing Castilian Spanish from all the other languages derived from Latin such as Galician, Portuguese and Catalan that were developing simultaneously in the Iberian Peninsula.

Posted by Luis Pinel Dec 22 '07

---

Corpus of Spanish offering 100 million + words

I’ve just opened an email from elcastellano.org reporting of an interview with Dr Mark Davies from Brigham Young University in which he talks about the benefits that his work on a corpus of the Spanish language, can provide to people interested in the aspects of written and spoken Spanish.

The Oxford Concise Dictionary of Linguistics by P. H. Matthews defines the term corpus in the first sentence to this entry as
Any systematic collection of speech or writing in a language or variety of a language.

Spanish possesses a vast oral and written corpus which can, with the help of the new IT technologies and the arduous work of academics like Dr Davies, be now available to the general public and Spanish language researchers.

This excellent corpus del español (http://www.corpusdelespanol.org/) is an invaluable tool to research aspects connected to the evolution of the Spanish language as the documents entered in its database comprise a very large amount of historical material going as far back as the 1200’s.

Any word, phrase, or combination of words in any given form can be searched for at the corpus del español website. Apart from the historical aspects connected with the language structures a person may be searching for, they can also search for terms as used by academia, the news, fictional writing and oral language.

Like for the corpus of any language, Dr Davies’ work is complex and therefore difficult to explain its mechanisms in a brief post like this. The best approach - in my opinion - is to spend some time at his website and follow the instructions given there.

I’ve only been able to have a quick look at this website. I’m pretty sure that I’ll be using it at a regular basis. I’m adding it right now to my links here.

The Corpus of Spanish by Dr Davies is a primary resource for any person wanting to know in detail aspects relating to the historical, syntactic, and semantic nature of the Spanish language.

Posted by Luis Pinel Dec 21 '07

---

Spanish is the fourth most important language in the world

Yesterday I bought the book Empires of the Word a Language History of the World by Nicholas Ostler. I'm sure it'll be a fascinating summer holiday reading.

Skimming the book's index I found that the author lists in one of its last chapters the current top twenty languages of the world as spoken by native and non native users. According to his list only Mandarin Chinese, English and Hindi are above Spanish.

Ostler quotes the number of people speaking Spanish at 417 million.

Considering that Spanish is the official language in twenty one nations and that the birth demographic indexes in those nations are still growing very fast, the figure quoted above is only bound to get bigger in the foreseeable future.

Spanish with all its phonological advantages (i.e. simple sound patterns), rich and vast lexical repertoire, sophisticated verbal structures and tenses - and not to mention its Latin inherited charm - is a language with a bright future that has a lot to offer to its native and non native speakers.

Posted by Luis Pinel Dec 18 '07

---

The word 'resiliencia' came to Spanish via English

Until today I didn't know that the word 'resiliencia' was used in Spanish. I have always used resilience or resilient as terms fully associated with the English language. Then today I received in my mailbox an email from 'La Palabra del Día' (www.elcastellano.org/palabra.html), in which as usual for this excellent service, it provides a very thorough explanation about the etymology of this word.

According to La Palabra del Día, the word resiliencia is not listed in Spanish dictionaries but it says that it's a term widely used in physics and the social sciences. All of these aspects are new to me!

A big surprise was to find out - although I suspected it - that the word resiliencia and its English cousins (i.e. cognates) like resilience or resilient all originated from Latin. However, the biggest surprise was to know that the word in reference here came to Spanish via the English language.

It was very interesting to know that resiliencia didn't arrive into Spanish from Latin; that it wasn't a vernacular Spanish term as I'd expected it to be, if I followed the logic that Spanish is a language almost completely derived from Latin. The analysis of this word explains that resiliencia in its English equivalents was first used in this tongue before being transferred to Spanish, a language derived from the source that gave origin to this term!

The people behind La Palabra del Día at elcastellano.org must be congratulated for maintaining this very excellent service for the study of Spanish, which makes the understanding of the deeper meanings of words a fascinating and intellectually challenging task.

P.S:
It's also important to note here, that this word in spite of its etymological roots - i.e. that of being so closely associated with the intrinsic nature of Spanish - and of its practical usage in contributing to the enrichment of this language, has not yet been incorporated into the dictionaries as pointed out by La Palabra del Día.

The word resiliencia is not an isolated case, there are thousands and thousands of words, especially of Americanisms (words vernacular to Hispanic America) which for very convoluted reasoning from language academies, find their particular paths of inclusion into the Spanish language dictionaries, to be a very difficult and bureaucratic process. But enough of this, I'll add more to this subject in a future post.

Below I reproduce the text found in La Palabra del Día.

Resiliencia

Esta palabra no se encuentra en los diccionarios castellanos, aunque es muy usada en la Física y en las ciencias sociales. El vocablo nos llegó desde el inglés resilience para expresar la capacidad de un material de recuperar su forma original después de haber sido sometido a altas presiones; en esa acepción, equivale a la cantidad energía que un material es capaz de almacenar cuando la presión lo obliga a reducir su volumen, y se expresa en julios por metro cúbico.

El psiquiatra infantil Michael Rutter (1970) y el neurólogo, psiquiatra y etólogo francés contemporáneo Boris Cyrulnik, inspirados en el concepto físico, introdujeron el término a la Psicología para denominar la capacidad de las personas de superar tragedias o acontecimientos fuertemente traumáticos.

Cyrulnik, cuyos padres judíos fueron asesinados por los nazis, estudió la capacidad de recuperación de los sobrevivientes de los campos de concentración y de niños criados en orfanatos. Resiliencia es una de esas palabras de origen latín que, curiosamente, nos han llegado a través del inglés, en este caso, del vocablo resilience, que a su vez se derivó del latín resilio, -ire, (saltar hacia atrás, volver de un salto) compuesta a su vez por el prefijo re- y el verbo salire (saltar).

Posted by Luis Pinel Dec 15 '07

---

Is it called Spanish or Castilian?

When I was a secondary school student, I used to study the subject 'castellano' - Castilian, in English - as part of the curriculum. At that stage it was natural for me to call 'castellano' the subject that studies my mother tongue, as for me 'español' (Spanish) and the name of the subject were the same thing.

Very often my students ask me whether there is any difference between the two terms. I usually explain that in English, Spanish is more often labeled that way, to denominate the official language of Hispanic America (Mexico, Guatemala, Peru, Cuba, Argentina, etc) and the dominant official language of Spain.

As a school subject, Spanish is generally known as 'castellano' in Spanish speaking countries. In English it is more often labeled 'Spanish'. In Spanish both terms are used interchangeably when speaking about the language in general terms. However, to make reference to its nature, the term 'Castilian' takes precedence.

In Spain, 'Castellano' is used instead of 'español' when is necessary to make very clear that the term refers to 'Castilian' and not to any other of the Spanish languages such as Galician or Catalan.

Spanish can also be called 'Castilian Spanish' to make the distinction referred to above. Castilian as the main language of Spain has come to be identified as 'Spanish', a fact that is quite evident by the popularity of its usage.

Most Spanish speaking countries in South America use the term 'castellano' when they are referring to Spanish in general.

In strict terms, the real name of Spanish is Castilian, as this language has its roots in Castile, a region of Spain. On the other hand, 'Spanish', as the most popular name for this language in English, can also be used as just another name for the language of Castile. The name 'Castilian' is always relevant in order to study features of Spanish relating to its linguistic or historical nature.

Posted by Luis Pinel Dec 1 '07

---

On learning Spanish for specific or special purpose

Last month I wrote a post here, about the nature of Spanish for travel courses. A Spanish course for specific or special purpose doesn’t have the same characteristics as a typical Spanish for travel course as presented on the post in reference. On the other hand, a lengthy Spanish for travel course can certainly be classified within a specific or special purpose category.

A Spanish course for specific or special purpose usually requires a complete learning of all the language features necessary to achieve language competence in a given field. A medical doctor or an electronics engineer, for example, has specific language needs which must be fulfilled by a course designed to satisfy their particular needs.

No course of this nature is exactly the same even if they are intended for an identical field. A biologist may need specific language structures that may differ with a course designed for an enologist (wine industry scientist).

Spanish courses for specific or special courses require that the student learn all the general aspects of Spanish before engaging in the acquisition of the specialized features needed to become an effective user of Spanish in both written and spoken language.

As stated above, to be really effective, a Spanish course for specific or special purpose involves that a student must fully learn all aspects of the language. This implies that the learning process can be time consuming and that the student must be prepared to do a good amount of homework, apart of engaging in a constant tuition arrangement with an experienced Spanish language professional.

Posted by Luis Pinel Nov 25 '07

---

The importance of cognate words in the learning process of Spanish

There are lots of words in Spanish that have a very close connection to an English word. Just to tease my students, when studying the sound and structure of some Spanish words, I list orally or on the whiteboard Spanish words such us 'visible', 'posible' or 'motor'.

In most cases they find it quite amusing and curious that words like 'visible' and 'motor' are exactly the same in both languages except for the different pronunciation. Then when I write twice the word 'visible' on the whiteboard and asked them to tell me which word is the Spanish or the English word, they really think that I'm going crazy; as for them both words are just the same. Things get sort out when I pronounce either of them as Spanish or English word.

Spanish and English share a vast amount of cognate words. Cognate words share a common origin; however, the meaning of a word can be different. For example the Spanish 'sensitivo' is not the same as the English 'sensitive', even though they proceed from the same source. The Spanish 'sensible' and the English 'sensible' don't mean the same thing either, even though they look exactly the same!

Students learning Spanish should, if in doubt check with their teacher or a dictionary to make sure that a given cognate word has the meaning that they intend to convey.

Cognates are of great help when pursuing a faster and efficient learning of Spanish as they make the sometimes tedious process of learning vocabulary an easier and more enjoyable task.

Posted by Luis Pinel Nov 17 '07

---

Letter 'ñ', the 'ü' and vowels carrying graphic accents in Spanish domain names

Letter 'ñ' is an integral part of the Spanish language. I wasn't aware until last week that this letter and many other characters used by Castilian Spanish and other languages from Spain, were still not allowed to register in Spanish domain names.

But reading El Mundo last week, I've found that all of that has been changed since June this year. And it's not only letter 'ñ' that can be registered; the list includes vowels carrying the graphic accents and the u with dieresis ('ü'). Apart from letter 'ñ' the list of incorporated new characters affecting Castilian Spanish is: 'á', 'é', 'í', 'ó', 'ú' and 'ü'.

Spanish is a language that requires all the special characters listed above in its standard written forms. Thus 'ñ', 'ü' and the graphically accented vowels as essential parts of the language were sorely needed for registering correctly Spanish domain names requiring such characters.

According to El Mundo, RAE - the Spanish initials for the Royal Spanish Language Academy - is celebrating this milestone as a great cultural achievement for the Spanish language.

This change will surely contribute to promote a proper usage of standard written Spanish on the web as well as making it easier to search for Spanish terms using correct spelling that also includes proper graphic accents.

Posted by Luis Pinel Nov 9 '07