Is Spanish expanding?

Paraguaigua noñe'êkuaáiva guarani pytaguarôguáicha hetâme

May 1, 2001

"A Paraguayan who can't speak Guaraní," opines this proverb, "is like a foreigner in his own land." In fact, between 90% and 95% of Paraguay's 5 million inhabitants speak Guaraní (pronounced "wa-ra-NEE," with a guttural rasp on the "wa"). That makes this indigenous language not just Paraguay's dominant language (by comparison, only 75% of Paraguayans speak Spanish), but also the only First Nations language on the planet to enjoy majority-language status, as well as the only one spoken on a large scale by non-aboriginals. (About half of Guaraní speakers are of European descent.) Finally, Guaraní earns Paraguay membership in that most restricted of clubs, the Officially Bilingual Nations of the Americas, a distinction it shares only with Canada and Haïti.

Victory in conquest
At contact, Guaraní cultures dominated northern Argentina, eastern Bolivia, and southern Brazil and Paraguay. In fact, after Arawakan, Guaraní may have been the most geographically widespread language in Latin America. But unlike every other native people in the Americas, the Guaraní managed to remain influential in Paraguay even after Spanish conquest. So influential were they in fact that the newcomers found they had to learn the local language to get by. Modern Paraguayans call Guaraní ñe'engatú ("dear speech"), or abá ñe'é ("common man's speech"). Traditionally relegated to a vernacular role in Paraguayan society, until recently Guaraní was not taught in schools or used in formal contexts in spite of its superior demographics. Today, thanks to a growing Paraguayan identity movement, it is poised to assume more substantial responsibilities in Paraguay and in the world.

The term "Guaraní" actually refers to a group of dialects of the Andean-Equatorial language family. (In addition to Guaraní, Andean-Equatorial languages include Quechua, Aymara, and Tupi, indigenous tongues that remain influential across most of modern South America.) Paraguay encloses several Guaraní dialects, among which two dominate. Mby'a is the dialect of rural aboriginals; most European and mixed-race Paraguayans speak Yopará. Although Yopará has absorbed many Spanish influences, it remains squarely Guaraní and is mostly intelligible to Mby'a speakers. And although Yopará accounts for most Guaraní communication on the national level, Mby'a is considered the "pure" tradition, insofar as it remains largely unadulterated by hispanicisms.

Though more Paraguayans speak Guaraní than Spanish, and songs and popular literature have been composed in it since colonial times, Guaraní had no official status in Paraguay until the 1992 Constitution recognised it as an official language. Though some Paraguayans still consider Guaraní a vulgar medium, many have embraced it as a patriotic touchstone. (The Paraguayan monetary unit is also called the guaraní.) Increasingly, Guaraní scholars are refuting old canards about its supposed inadequacy for 21st century communication, and are calling for academic supervision to halt the entry of Spanish words and bad neologisms into the language. Others propose that Mby'a be accepted as the scholarly standard (Guaraní has heretofore had none), that Yopará become the language of national life, and that Castellano (Spanish) be taught chiefly as a means of enabling Paraguayans to communicate with foreigners, rather than as a national medium. A Congreso Nacional de Lengua y Cultura Guaraní has been founded to oversee these and other issues, such as developing media and academic models.

http://www.suite101.com/article.cfm/world_languages/67586

Atecine , Sun Jan 25, 2009 2:31 am GMT

<<In the whole African continent: French is more useful and expanding more but Spanish is dying. >>

I agree with Atecine that French is more useful and expanding in Africa than spanish because France had more colonies in Africa than Spain. Spanish is spoken in Ecuatorial Guinea, West Sahara and North Morroco. However, French is spoken in Morroco, Algeria, etc....... Also I think that the Belgium Colonies helped too.We can say that Africa for France and Belgium is what America Continent was for Spain.

On the other hand, we can find a lot of ex-British Colonies in Africa, which is very important to understand the spread of English in Nun-English Speaking Countries in Africa. Nowdays, English is the most important language to comunicate to each other and English is spreading very fast through countries around the world and specially in Africa. Some countries in Africa start to adopt English as official Language, even thought they have French, Portuguese, etc... as official Language.

I also think that Anglo-Saxons Counttries Have known to sell better the Englsih than others. According to somefriends Spain started to sell Spanish in no Spanish speaking countries later than Anglo-Saxons Countries and France. But Spain has learned from them how to sell Spanish. Now it spreads widely.

Law Sun Jan 25, 2009 3:25 am GMT

<< On the other hand, we can find a lot of ex-British Colonies in Africa, which is very important to understand the spread of English in Nun-English Speaking Countries in Africa. Nowdays, English is the most important language to comunicate to each other and English is spreading very fast through countries around the world and specially in Africa. Some countries in Africa start to adopt English as official Language, even thought they have French, Portuguese, etc... as official Language. >>

Before you brag about English and badmouth French Statuses in Africa, let me rimind you that English is in great danger there because Swahili is being promoted in Kenya, Uganda, and Tanzania at the expense of English.

English is now more seldom used in Egypt and Sudan than French in Algeria, Morocco, and Tanzania.

French is now mandatory in English Speaking African countries such as Ghana, Sierra Leone, Gambia, Egypt, and even in South Africa. Surprisingly the most serious are Nigeria and Liberia where there is a campaign to make it the second official langauge or equate it with English. French has even become a medium of instruction in matha, science, and social studies in these countries. French is also taught at college level in Zimbabwe, Malawi, Zambia, Sudan, Uganda, Kenya, Namibia, and Tanzania. It's ironic that Rwanda is phasing it out.

<< I also think that Anglo-Saxons Counttries Have known to sell better the Englsih than others. According to somefriends Spain started to sell Spanish in no Spanish speaking countries later than Anglo-Saxons Countries and France. But Spain has learned from them how to sell Spanish. Now it spreads widely. >>

What do you mean? Is cultural sabotage agains French, German, Italian, Russian, and Portuugese being waged by the hispanics in the internet a form of marketing strategy? Are you kidding?

Rule.

Take Easy. Don't be nervious. You want that french is The new Lengua Franca. Ok, It is the New Lengua Franca. Whatever YOu Want.

Law ddid nto say anything about Is cultural sabotage agains French, German, Italian, Russian, and Portuugese.

I think You, French Fanatics and the hispanic fanatics need help.

Law Good Post.

Guest.

No need for French to become a new world lingua franca because it has been since the 17th century whike Spanish was/is ans never become one.

Good post Rule.

LOL. Do you really think French is the world lingua franca today?

French Lengua Franca?

LOL

<< LOL. Do you really think French is the world lingua franca today? >>

A world lingua franca just like English, Russian, and German.

French Lengua Franca?

Spanish lingua stofata.

Language policy in Spanish-speaking Latin America deals with challenges to the status of Spanish as the official language, a status inherited from the colonial administration of the New World. THESE CHALLENGES COME FROM SEVERAL SOURCES: THE ASSERTION OF THE RIGHTS OF INDIGENOUS GROUPS, THE ‘DANGER’ OF FRAGMENTATION OF SPANISH INTO A MULTITUDE OF LOCAL DIALECTS, THE GROWING PRESTIGE OF ENGLISH AND INFLUENCE OF THE UNITED STATES, AND ALONG THE SOUTHERN BORDER OF BRAZIL, CONTACT WITH PORTUGUESE.

In the initial phase of colonization, the Catholic Monarchs and later Charles V required all of their new subjects to learn Spanish, just as their predecessors had imposed the learning of Castilian on the conquered Arab territories in order to bind them more closely together in the nation governed by Castile. However, it soon became clear that the linguistic diversity of the New World was too great to allow for the immediate implantation of Spanish, and some allowance had to be made for the usage of indigenous languages in teaching and evangelization. In 1570 Phillip II reluctantly authorized a policy of bilingualism in which instruction could be imparted in ‘the’ language of each Viceroyalty: Nahautl and in New Spain and Quechua in Peru, with the consequent extension of these two languages into territories where they were not spoken natively. Even this measure was not enough, however, and in 1596 Phillip II recognized the existent multilingualism: Spanish for administration and access to the elite, and a local indigenous language for evangelization and daily communication in indigenous communities. This policy lead to a separation of colonial society into a minority of Spanish/creole Spanish-speakers governing an indigenous majority speaking one of many indigenous languages. The separation became so great that it all but halted the Hispanization of rural areas and created local indigenous elites with considerable autonomy from the central adminstration. A reassertion of central authority commenced in 1770 when Carlos III declared Spanish to be the only language of the Empire and ordered the administrative, judicial and ecclesiastic authorities to extinguish all others. After Independence, the new nations and their successors maintained the offical status of Spanish as a means of strengthening national unity and pursuing modernization through education. This tendency was reinforced at the turn of the century through the 1940’s with notions of Social Darwinism, in which the vigorous hybrid groups of Latin America would eventually overcome the ‘weaker’ indigenous groups. It is only since World War II that this policy has suffered any substantial change.

Several processes converged in the post-War period to shake the linguistic status quo. One is the growth of industrialization, which requires an educated workforce and thus lends urgency to effective education. Another is agrarian reform, which raises the social status of the farmer while increasing his need for vocational training. These two processes create a growing pressure to learn the language of technology and mechanization, Spanish. As a counterpoint to this pressure, there was an understanding among policy makers of the failure of the pre-War incorporationist policies to acheive their goal of Hispanization. The confluence of these tendencies was a shift towards the usage of indigenous languages in primary schools to ease the transition to Spanish. Moreover, the dynamic of questioning the entire model of development grew, a dynamic that was reinforced by the emergence of indigenous activists educated in the new national schools. These contradictions came to a head during the labor and peasant movements of the 1950’s and 60’s, where calls for the preservation of indigenous languages served as a vehicle for the preservation of entire indigenous societies. The subsequent official response to these movements had diverse outcomes throughout Latin America. In Mexico, the new indigenous consciousness continued to grow unabated, as it did among the Bolivian Aymara and Ecuadorian Quechua, and to a lesser extent among the other Quechua speakers of Bolivia and Peru. Elsewhere, many organizations were driven into marginality or outright armed resistence, with the paradoxical result that often the only officially-tolerated supporters of indigenous languages were foreigners: scholars pursuing linguistic or anthropological fieldwork, linguists trained by the Summer Institute of Linguistics for the translation and dissemination of Christian texts, or members of other non-governmental organizations engaged in aid or relief work.

Only recently have indigenous defensors of indigenous languages found any standing on the national stage. This new tolerance has been said to reflect the neo-liberal reforms required as conditions for loans from the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund since the early 1990’s, with the threat of Communist takeover having receeded. There are now a multitude of protective measures that go from bilingual primary education (Honduras), to constitutional protection (Columbia), to the establishment of indigenous languages as co-official with Spanish (Guatemala).

With respect to the status of Spanish among native speakers, Independence lead to the creation of national educational institutions and a desire to reform Spanish orthography so as to facilitate its learning by American speakers, as well as to foster a literary tradition independent of Spain. Such reforms come to little in the face of the turbulence created by Independence, but a second round of standardization began as part of the modernization process initiated around 1870. Increasing immigration to Latin America and the strengthening of trends towards democratization lead to the fear among the intellectual elite that the linguistic unity of Latin America would collapse into a cacophomy of local variants, much as the Latin of the Roman Empire fragmented into the variety of Romance languages.

The final threat to the official status of Spanish is the growing contact with other European languages: with English throughout Latin America, and with Portuguese along the southern border of Brazil. Contact with English arises through migration to the United States for economic or political reasons or sojourns for business or education. This contact is particularily acute in the case of Puerto Rico, where its adminstrative dependency on the United States has led to an extensive diffusion of English, as well as the threatened imposition of English as the official language should Puerto Rico ever gain statehood. This threat has sparked intellectual debates that echo the Spanish-vs.-indigenous-language debates heard on the mainland: language is an expression of identity, perhaps the fundmental expression of identity, and it should not be given up lightly.

Selected references
Angel Rama (1996) The Lettered City. Duke University Press.
[spelling reform after independence, p. 43ff; foundation of Spanish American Academies, Cuervo, Caro & Bello p. 59ff]
Julio Ramos (1989) Desenceuntros de la modernidad en América Latina. Literatura y política en el siglo XIX. Tierra Firme, México.
[Ch. II sobre Bello]
Julio Ramos (1996) Paradojas de la letra. Ediciones eXcultura, Caracas, Miami, Quito.
[Ch. 1 sobre Bello]

http://www.tulane.edu/~howard/Pubs/LALangPol.html

SPANISH IS IN GREAT DANGER OF DISINTEGRATION

Films for the Humanities and Sciences, based in Princeton, New Jersey, performs an invaluable service in providing us with a vast array of informative films, useful in teaching and fascinating as documentaries. It has issued a six-part series, "Biography of the Spanish Language." It is not aimed at specialists, who might argue with many of the statements, but at the broad public; indeed, it began as a series of programs for Mexican television and possibly schools. To attract a wide public it uses the tricks of the trade: noisy background music, lighting effects, and slapstick humor. The problem is that these effects tend to drown out the speech, the subject of the series.

It treats language as the expression of a culture and its history, with literature, especially poetry, as its elevated form as opposed to the vernacular. It views Spanish from a Mexican perspective, which is understandable, since Mexico has more inhabitants than any other country. However, it mentions only briefly other Latin American forms of Spanish, with not a word about Catalan or Portuguese. The first film deals with the history of Spanish down to its introduction in the Americas. The conquistadores appear as a violent, rather stupid lot, while Indian life is romanticized. There are pictures of beautiful colonial cities, but no credit is given to the Spanish civil authorities who planned them. The Inquisition is condemned, while the missionaries,are praised. The Jesuits are lauded for having promoted the cause of independence in the colonial period. are there any books on that subject?

THE SECTION ON MODERN COLLOQUIAL SPANISH, ESPECIALLY THAT SPOKEN ON TELEVISION, IS DISCOURAGING. IT IS OFTEN DIFFICULT TO UNDERSTAND, EVEN FOR PEOPLE FROM OTHER SPANISH-SPEAKING COUNTRIES. THE FILM MAKES LIGHT OF THIS, BUT IT IS A PATHETIC DECLINE FROM THE BEAUTIFUL SPANISH PROMOTED BY THE SPANISH ACADEMY. EVEN SOME LATIN AMERICAN STUDENTS AT STANFORD USE A SLANG UNKNOWN TO ME AND OFTEN TO OTHER LATIN AMERICANS. SOME WAISERS DEFEND THE VARIANTS AS THE EXPRESSION OF A PEOPLE, BUT THEY SEEM TO HAVE A ROMANTIC LONGING FOR THE GOOD OLD TIMES WHEN THE INHABITANTS OF ONE VALLEY COULD NOT UNDERSTAND THOSE OF THE NEXT. JOHN WONDER COMPLAINS ABOUT THIS, AND ABOUT THE MACHINE-GUN LIKE SPEECH OF YOUNG PEOPLE. INDEED, IN THE BOGOTA I FIRST KNEW, THE "ATHENS OF AMERICA," THE INTELLECTUAL ELITE SPOKE A VERY BEAUTIFUL SPANISH. NOW SCOLA REBROADCASTS NEWS PROGRAMS FROM CALI. THE YOUNG WOMEN ANNOUNCERS ON THE PROGRAM RATTLE OFF SPANISH IS HIGH-PITCHED VOICES WITHOUT THE INTONATION INDICATING COMPREHENSION. THE DECLINE OF SPANISH IN COLOMBIA IS A TRAGEDY, ADMITTEDLY INSIGNIFICANT IN COMPARISON WITH THE MAJOR TRAGEDY OF LIFE THERE.

The influence of politics on language may be baneful in many parts of the Spanish-speaking world. In 1932 I went to Barcelona to study Catalan with Pompeu Fabra, revered as the father of contemporary Catalan studies; a university is named after him. The atmosphere was very pleasant. Then came the Civil War and Franco, who suppressed Catalan autonomy and the Catalan language. The backlash has been distressing. I am probably the only surviving pupil of Pompeu Fabra, and I thought that would earn general respect. Nevertheless, a young Catalan has accused me of insulting his language, while others have charged that I am a victim of Spanish propaganda. This mentality is counterproductive, endangering Barcelona's leading place as a publisher of books in Spanish. One WAISer tells me she has an American friend who speaks very good Spanish and is married to a Barcelona businessman. They live in New York, but he does not want his children to learn Spanish. Does he realize that he is closing the door to opportunities which would open to them in the vast Spanish-speaking world?

Ronald Hilton - 4/15/01

http://www.stanford.edu/group/wais/Language/language_mexandothers41501.html

Indian Languages and effects on radio broadcasting

LANGUAGE AND RADIO IN PERU AND BOLIVIA

To put the Guatemalan sociolinguistic situation and its manifestation in radio broadcasting in perspective, I feel it is useful to briefly examine Peru and Bolivia, two other Latin American countries with large Indian populations. Peru has about three-and-a-half million Quechua speakers out of a total population of seventeen million. In addition there are about half-a-million Aymara speakers. Although their numbers are small, compared to the total population, the Indians are concentrated in five southern mountain departments, where they make up as much as ninety percent of the population. Over half of Bolivia's 5.2 million population are Indians, about equally divided between Quechuas and Aymaras. As in Guatemala, the Indians of Peru and Bolivia were subdued by the Spanish and then relegated to the roles of peasants at the bottom end of society.

However, there is a major difference between Guatemala, on the one hand, and Peru and Bolivia on the other hand. Both of the latter countries have had governments which have taken a positive approach to bilingual education and language planning. The Indians and peasants of Bolivia began receiving a more active role in the government since that country's 1952 revolution. In Peru, serious attention was given to the peasants after a leftwing military coup in 1969. Although other governments have come and gone in the interim in both cases, what was started could not be stopped.

Bilingual education has been at the forefront of both countries' policies. In recent years "there has been a tradition of positive government policy towards bilingual education programmes in Andean Latin America" (Minaya-Rowe,1986, 468), and moreover, the aim of these programs "as officially stated, is not to produce a nation of monolingual Spanish speakers, but rather one of bilingual Spanish-Quechua speakers" (Minaya- Rowe, 1986, 475). Bolivia's education system uses "a bilingual approach which will educate its adult population, allowing them to retain their own
languages and cultures, while at the same time providing the opportunity to learn Spanish (Stark, 1985, p541). Peru designed its bilingual education program "to draw the indigenous groups into the Peruvian mainstream efficiently and with respect shown to their language and culture" (Hornberger, 1987, 206).

Both countries have even gone a step further. IN 1975, QUECHUA WAS MADE AN OFFICIAL LANGUAGE OF PERU (ESCOBAR 1981, HORNBERGER 1987), WHICH EVEN INCLUDED THE TEACHING OF QUECHUA TO SPANISH SPEAKERS. SIMILARLY, BOTH QUECHUA AND AYMARA WERE MADE OFFICIAL LANGUAGES, COEQUAL TO SPANISH, IN BOLIVIA (MINAYA-ROWE, 1986). ONE OF THE MANIFESTATIONS OF GIVING OFFICIAL STATUS WAS "THE USE OF BOTH QUECHUA OR AYMARA AND SPANISH ON (THE) RADIO" (MINAYA-ROWE, 1986).There are, in fact, some great differances between these countries and Guatemala in regards to the use of Indian languages in radio broadcasting.

Both countries, like Guatemala, have Catholic and Protestant stations that use Indian languages (Ballon, 1987; Fontenelle, 1985; Gavilan, 1983; Moore, 1985; Oros, 1987; Perry, 1982; Povrzenic, 1987b, 1987c). But what about privately owned commercial stations? In the Andean highlands of southern and central Peru, there are at least several commercial stations known to broadcast in Quechua and/or Aymara, in addition to Spanish (Hirahara & Inoue, 1984a, 1984b; Llorens and Tamayo, 1987; Povrzenic, 1987a, 1987b). These include at least one member of the Cadena de Emisoras Cruz, one of Peru's largest radio networks (Hirahara & Inoue, 1984a). In addition, Peru's most powerful commercial radio broadcaster, Radio Union in Lima, has an hour long program in Quechua every morning (Hirahara, 1981; Montoya, 1987). Likewise, in Bolivia commercial broadcasters are known to broadcast in indigenous languages (Gwyn, 1983; La Defensa, 1986; Povrzenic, 1983).

What is most significant, though, is that in both cases the official government stations have added Indian language broadcasts. Peru's Radio Nacional broadcasts in both Quechua and Aymara (Povrzenic, 1987a), as does Bolivia's Radio Illimani (Moore, 1985). IN FACT, THE PERUVIAN GOVERNMENT WENT A STEP FURTHER IN 1988 WHEN THEY RENAMED RADIO NACIONAL WITH THE QUECHUA NAME RADIO PACHICUTEC (KLEMETZ, 1989).

In summary, the sociolinguistic situation in Peru and Bolivia is markedly different from that in Guatemala, although all three share Spanish as a dominant language over various native languages. The difference, though is that in Peru and Bolivia, efforts have been made not only to preserve, but to give status to the native languages. Furthermore, the status of native languages in the two countries is reflected in their use by all levels of radio broadcasting in each country; private, religious, and governmental.

http://aymara.org/listarchives/archivo2001/msg00322.html

Paraguaigua noñe'êkuaáiva guarani pytaguarôguáicha hetâme

May 1, 2001

"A Paraguayan who can't speak Guaraní," opines this proverb, "is like a foreigner in his own land." In fact, between 90% and 95% of Paraguay's 5 million inhabitants speak Guaraní (pronounced "wa-ra-NEE," with a guttural rasp on the "wa"). That makes this indigenous language not just Paraguay's dominant language (by comparison, only 75% of Paraguayans speak Spanish), but also the only First Nations language on the planet to enjoy majority-language status, as well as the only one spoken on a large scale by non-aboriginals. (About half of Guaraní speakers are of European descent.) Finally, Guaraní earns Paraguay membership in that most restricted of clubs, the Officially Bilingual Nations of the Americas, a distinction it shares only with Canada and Haïti.

Victory in conquest
At contact, Guaraní cultures dominated northern Argentina, eastern Bolivia, and southern Brazil and Paraguay. In fact, after Arawakan, Guaraní may have been the most geographically widespread language in Latin America. But unlike every other native people in the Americas, the Guaraní managed to remain influential in Paraguay even after Spanish conquest. So influential were they in fact that the newcomers found they had to learn the local language to get by. Modern Paraguayans call Guaraní ñe'engatú ("dear speech"), or abá ñe'é ("common man's speech"). Traditionally relegated to a vernacular role in Paraguayan society, until recently Guaraní was not taught in schools or used in formal contexts in spite of its superior demographics. Today, thanks to a growing Paraguayan identity movement, it is poised to assume more substantial responsibilities in Paraguay and in the world.

The term "Guaraní" actually refers to a group of dialects of the Andean-Equatorial language family. (In addition to Guaraní, Andean-Equatorial languages include Quechua, Aymara, and Tupi, indigenous tongues that remain influential across most of modern South America.) Paraguay encloses several Guaraní dialects, among which two dominate. Mby'a is the dialect of rural aboriginals; most European and mixed-race Paraguayans speak Yopará. Although Yopará has absorbed many Spanish influences, it remains squarely Guaraní and is mostly intelligible to Mby'a speakers. And although Yopará accounts for most Guaraní communication on the national level, Mby'a is considered the "pure" tradition, insofar as it remains largely unadulterated by hispanicisms.

Though more Paraguayans speak Guaraní than Spanish, and songs and popular literature have been composed in it since colonial times, Guaraní had no official status in Paraguay until the 1992 Constitution recognised it as an official language. Though some Paraguayans still consider Guaraní a vulgar medium, many have embraced it as a patriotic touchstone. (The Paraguayan monetary unit is also called the guaraní.) Increasingly, Guaraní scholars are refuting old canards about its supposed inadequacy for 21st century communication, and are calling for academic supervision to halt the entry of Spanish words and bad neologisms into the language. Others propose that Mby'a be accepted as the scholarly standard (Guaraní has heretofore had none), that Yopará become the language of national life, and that Castellano (Spanish) be taught chiefly as a means of enabling Paraguayans to communicate with foreigners, rather than as a national medium. A Congreso Nacional de Lengua y Cultura Guaraní has been founded to oversee these and other issues, such as developing media and academic models.

http://www.suite101.com/article.cfm/world_languages/67586

Frecn LEngua Franca!!!!!!!!!!

English id THE ONLY LENGUA FRANCA.

PLEASE STOP SAYING STUPID THINGS

Franch langua be frank to me
Franko Spanish king of last century
has banned Catalão

Spanish is one the most overestimated languages in the world. Nobody learns it in Asia or Australia, not to mention Africa