Hi, I don't know if I should study Spanish. Some people say that Spanish is in decline.
What do you think about?
What do you think about?
Is Spanish disintigrating like Latin did?
Consider Spanish a dead and extict language by the time you become fluent if you start learning it.
<<Some people say that Spanish is in decline.>>
Right now, it looks like SPanish is on the rise, at the expense of English, at least here in the US.
It's possible that all Western languages are in for a long-term decline, as Chinese becomes dominant.
Right now, it looks like SPanish is on the rise, at the expense of English, at least here in the US.
It's possible that all Western languages are in for a long-term decline, as Chinese becomes dominant.
It is indeed diverging into several difference Romance languages. Moreover, it's also weakening in prestige: in Peru Quechua is gaining ground, in Spain the country itself is disintegrating.
Baldewin, mon ami, Spanish is on the rise. Only 10 points:
1. There are over 60 million Hispanics in USA. There will be over 135 in 2050 (US census)
2. Spanish is the second most studied language in France, Japan, India, Germany, Sweden and UK, for example.
3. Spanish is compulsory subject in Brazil from 2005. In Philippines from 2009.
4. Spanish is official in European Union, African Union, UNASUR (South America), NAFTA (North America), Central American Common Market, CARICOM (Caribbean) and Antarctic Treaty. In APEC (Asia-Pacific) is a promoted language, like Chinese.
5. Spanish is the second most studied language in the World, after English.
6. There are some 500 million of Spanish speakers. Besides, there are 225 million of Portuguese speakers. If you speak Spanish you can understand over 725 million people around the World.
7. Spanish is the majoritary language in some 25 countries or states in the World.
8. Spanish is the third language in Internet, after English and Chinese.
9. Spanish is the third economic language, after English and Chinese.
10. Spanish is a phonetic language. According to several webpages it is the easiest major language for Anglos.
1. There are over 60 million Hispanics in USA. There will be over 135 in 2050 (US census)
2. Spanish is the second most studied language in France, Japan, India, Germany, Sweden and UK, for example.
3. Spanish is compulsory subject in Brazil from 2005. In Philippines from 2009.
4. Spanish is official in European Union, African Union, UNASUR (South America), NAFTA (North America), Central American Common Market, CARICOM (Caribbean) and Antarctic Treaty. In APEC (Asia-Pacific) is a promoted language, like Chinese.
5. Spanish is the second most studied language in the World, after English.
6. There are some 500 million of Spanish speakers. Besides, there are 225 million of Portuguese speakers. If you speak Spanish you can understand over 725 million people around the World.
7. Spanish is the majoritary language in some 25 countries or states in the World.
8. Spanish is the third language in Internet, after English and Chinese.
9. Spanish is the third economic language, after English and Chinese.
10. Spanish is a phonetic language. According to several webpages it is the easiest major language for Anglos.
Non phonetical languages and those with a lot of phonemes are way more likely to disintegrate than a simple and phonetical language like Spanish
Spanish is the third economic language
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Well, there is a German webpage where Spanish is fourth, after English, Chinese and Japanese.
The GDP of all the Hispanic countries, including the Hispanic minority in USA, is bigger than the GDP of Japan. So, it can be third.
Anyway, Spanish is better than French.
http://www.steinke-institut.de/sprachenundwirtschaft.htm
The GDP of all the Hispanic countries, including the Hispanic minority in USA, is bigger than the GDP of Japan. So, it can be third.
Anyway, Spanish is better than French.
http://www.steinke-institut.de/sprachenundwirtschaft.htm
Well, there is a German webpage where Spanish is fourth, after English, Chinese and Japanese.
The GDP of all the Hispanic countries, including the Hispanic minority in USA, is bigger than the GDP of Japan. So, it can be third.
Anyway, Spanish is better than French.
http://www.steinke-institut.de/sprachenundwirtschaft.htm
Who cares?!
The GDP of all the Hispanic countries, including the Hispanic minority in USA, is bigger than the GDP of Japan. So, it can be third.
Anyway, Spanish is better than French.
http://www.steinke-institut.de/sprachenundwirtschaft.htm
Who cares?!
es verdad yo no entiendo a nadie pues todos hablan como si sus bocas estuvieran llenas de mierda, pues son drogadictos y lo unico que hacen es chupar pijas asi que tenes razon, el espanol esta desintegrandose por eso voy a aprender un idioma verdaderamente importante como el frances o el neerlandes, y voy a dejar de chupar pijas y tomar drogas y me convertire en presidente de la union sovietica
Spanish in Hispanic America is also in decline because of English, Portuguese and Amerindian languages like Quechua, Guarani, Aymara, Nahuatl, and Quiche plus the speech of this region are diverging from Standard Spanish and from each other that will someday end up as Inidoro Spanish instead of Castilian Spanish.
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
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
Spanish is fragmenting and eroding in Hispanic Amerrica
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
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