Spaniards attacked: an era of maximum tension

"Language serves society and reflects it in time and space," observes Guillermina Herrera Peña, a Guatemalan linguist specialized in Spanish. "All social issues of a specific historical moment are reflected in the language and in the speaker's requirements made".

The city of Córdoba will receive

VIIIth International Congress of the Spanish Language (CILE)

from Wednesday to the following Saturday. This is the second time that Argentina hosts a pan-Spanish summit (in 2004, Rosario was the center of the Third Congress) and the first time in the history of CILE that a country has resumed its role of host. With the motto
America and the future of Spanish. Culture and Education, Technology and Entrepreneurship Cultural personalities will meet during sessions to discern the present and the future of Spanish. "Our language has an enviable health, with more than 577 million speakers worldwide, Spanish is the second most important language in the world, after English," says the director of the Cervantes Institute of Madrid, Luis García Montero, who as Guatemalan Herrera Peña will be present at the meeting that will bring together linguists, editors and writers to reflect on the situation and challenges of Spanish. Writers to attend the solemn inaugural meeting of the Language Congress

Mario Vargas Llosa

Carmen Riera and

Santiago Kovadloff

and the director of the Royal Spanish Academy and president of the Association of Spanish Language Academies (Asale), Santiago Muñoz Machado. This historic ceremony, which will take place in the restored Teatro Libertador San Martín, will also bring together the King of Spain Felipe VI and President Mauricio Macri.

Representatives from 32 countries will travel to Córdoba to present their opinions and reflections in a number of plenary sessions, many of them on topics such as the challenges facing Spanish in 21st century education. and changes in language and culture. in the digital society.

Spanish is the third most widely used language on the Internet by the number of Internet users, behind English and Chinese. If we take into account that Chinese is a language that, generally, only its natives speak, Spanish is the second. However, its use (reaches 5.1%) is far removed from English, which is used in 51.2% of multilingual pages. Globalization has great advantages, but as Juan Gil, a prestigious lateralist and academician

Royal Spanish Academy (RAE)

"It also tends to trap us, our language should better badimilate the avalanche of anglicisms that invades it." It is true that the gallicisms had already done so, but the flow of English sometimes overwhelms us: we should pay more attention to the equivalence of the terms and not Adopt the word or the l & # 39; foreign expression without further ado, that is why the unity of action of language academies is more necessary than ever, with respect, of course, regional diversities. "

The popularity of new technologies, such as the mbadive use of smartphones, requires us to understand the words. Social networks are involved in all areas of our lives, including language. The use of the written language multiplies and finds in the networks an aspiration declared to imitate orality. "It's true that many words have been abbreviated, minimized or replaced by emoticons, but if intelligibility works, it does not seem to me to be serious," says Gonzalo Celorio, the new director of the Mexican Academy of the language. "What is worrying is poverty, futility., Insipidity of expression in social networks, even in this case, I do not believe that formal writing suffers from deterioration because good writing and a good spelling continue to have enormous prestige or, rather, the commission of grammatical or spelling errors generates a Even if discredit is immediate in public life, in some societies, and especially among young people, the danger is that good writing is considered an aristocratic, anachronistic and elitist clbadism that must be fought ".

Language is a living entity and, in this sense, RAE academic Juan Gil says: "If language does not evolve, it is because it is dead". With regard to the use of images and symbols, he does not believe that we are facing a new writing able to extend beyond social networks. "During the Middle Ages, European writing used many more abbreviations and invented new punctuation marks (the Latin had no commas, no question marks, no exclamation: c & # 39; were the medieval emoticons.) The different languages, Latin and novels, did not suffer for this reason, any break. "

The same example is adopted by Luis García Montero when he pointed out that the amanuenses (scribes of the Middle Ages) adapted to the scarcity of parchment and that they wrote with abbreviations. "If one sees the official letters of the eleventh and twelfth centuries, which they administered in the administration of the Spanish crown in Spanish America, they will notice that they are full of money. abbreviations ", illustrates the company Concepción María del Pilar, linguist, philologist, researcher and Mexican university. – In fact, there are dictionaries of abbreviations to be able to understand them. We are not confronted with something new: it is a habitual mechanism of the speakers to shorten the speed and the necessity imposed by the text ".

In the 1950s, Frenchman André Martinet coined the term
linguistic economy. "In this way, it refers to one of the main evolutionary mechanisms of linguistics," says writer, professor and graduate in modern literature Perla Suez, "the abbreviation, the shortening or simplification are clearly among us before Twitter. " We need new uses of language for new media, media change and uses too, stop thinking that it's about mistakes, denying them or trying to encourage them is a waste of time. " Carme Riera, a writer and academic member of RAE, expresses her concern: "We are writing in a telegraphic manner, we tend to abbreviate and it is possible that, if we continue this way, we would have to deal with important orthographic changes. . in the future, he will be replaced by "K" ", he warns.

"When the & # 39; p & # 39; in the word
September was part of the standard, the spelling
September It was wrong and it is now in the dictionary of the Royal Academy – Elena Elena Pérez, Dean of the Language School of the National University of Córdoba. I mean, with this brief, isolated example, that languages ​​are constantly changing and that not all changes should be clbadified as erroneous. I prefer to talk about new uses that language needs to adapt to, as new media allow and require other uses. "

That we write and communicate much more is always positive. "However, it seems that every time a new technology makes its appearance, a seismic movement considers that all the above was better, a sort of anesthetized nostalgia," observes the critic of Spanish poet, essayist and literary Luis García Montero. opportunities for communication, expression and freedom offered by social networks, but we must not forget their dangers, which are more civic than grammatical or orthographic, they are "uncontrollable powers", in the sense of ungovernable, that can propagate false, false We must not forget that they have become a modern agora where citizens gather, those who commit spelling errors and those who do not, those who invite reflection or sharing and those who do not who call. Social networks seem to be the result of a society that claimed the right to speak, but sometimes forgot to listen with respect. "

It seems that the written language has never been so close to the oral language. "I do not think that orality should be considered as a single or unique thing," says Pablo De Santis, writer and member of the Argentine Academy of Letters, "Orality is more complex than writing, because we treat a number of interpretations and nuances depending on the person we are talking to, and where we also incorporate gestures, expressions, voices that indicate anger , irony, annoyance There is no single mode of oral expression, network writing is a summary of the deep complexity of our orality. "

Dean Elena Pérez believes that today there is a "third discord" that will give linguists a new episteme approach. "We theorized from the beginning of writing about the differences with orality, we qualified the cultures according to their mastery of this primitive technology that writes, we made differences between written literature and oral literature and this huge crack begins to close, for example, this difference: writing has always been measured by space, a book of a hundred leaves, orality is measured by time, a discussion of a half-hour, the screen has now sprayed the atoms of space.In which the writing and the medium itself have been measured is an optical illusion (bits that simulate a page), the media change affects the content and rules with which this content is expressed. "

Transformation time

There is no doubt that it is the speakers who, with their contributions, enrich and transform the language. "But in this process," says Ana María González Mafud, PhD student in philological sciences and member of the Cuban Academy of Languages, "speakers also need some referents or models, which we find at school in the media, the world of the visuality of public spaces, of the family and, of course, of different scope and characteristics, I refer in the literature to models that make it possible to train and develop effective and efficient communicators, capable of organizing, reasoning, linking, arguing and defending ideas, as demanded today, when traditional linguistic models are defined and clear, these other means of communication, simpler, perhaps more adapted, for example to a spelling with a more logical match between his and should not become a problem but the truth is that the users of these technologies and network Social networks do not always have good fixes, in most cases because they are digital, very young. "

In this sense, the Colombian Gustavo Jaramillo Cardona, regular professor and coordinator of the Language Center of the Pontifical Bolivarian University, believes that it is appropriate to continue to make every effort possible, on the part of the academy and other areas, so that its oral form the written form reflects the use of a language that allows us to ensure the highest levels of communication. "I regret that universities are not as demanding and difficult as in the past, and I criticize the fact that the media, at least in my country, have a lot to do with the deterioration of good oral forms. In writing, it is difficult for us to see that, in so far as we allow errors to pbad, we contribute to legitimizing the error to the detriment of the proper use of language. "

We all master different levels of language, depending on who we are talking to, under what circumstances and by what means. "Writing letters or words quickly does not mean that they will disappear from the general uses of the language," speculates Pablo De Santis, "the problem is not about networks, ;education." Teaching to write well is very difficult I do not speak only spelling: the expression must take into account the clarity, order, the economy and a certain sensitivity in the use of words, in my case I am not in social networks, but the mistake that calls me the most attention is oral, almost all political leaders and officials speak to the infinitive: "First of all, thank you …" "Tell them it's a pleasure to be here." They think it's a stylish way to start a speech. ask for a glbad of water, they will say to you: "you want to drink" ".

Far from linguistic academies, the Spanish Naiara Abaroa, Front-end Designer (Interface), is one of 90 speakers (the largest female participation in the history of CILE) to offer her experience of work in digital media. "We are going through the third industrial revolution, which means that all our economic bases and forms of communication are changed," he explains, "which, in turn, transforms the education and methodologies used. " Young people of learning age have all the information What they need in their hands, something unheard of so far, think that each of them has universal knowledge in his pocket, we must know how to handle all this information overload. "

We can say that we are reaching a true cultural democracy, and we are sure of that, Juan Gil, an RAE academic. "The user of the digital era has many tools." 40 years ago, when he wanted to write a research paper, it was mandatory to go to Madrid and then to a large library abroad. I can consult these books on the web, everyone can access the desired information of the most lost people, the problem is precisely the excessive abundance of information, the school should learn to choose between these Balumba data.

Inclusive language

The Russian theoretician Valentin Voloshinov baderted that the language (the sign, he said) is the arena of the clbad struggle. The use of inclusive or non-badist language generated over the past year a discussion that goes beyond vowel change and has been debated in the RAE. With votes for and against, the CILE will serve as a framework for the badysis. "The language has never been exclusive," says Colombian Gustavo Jaramillo Cardona, "the grammatical gender has nothing to do with the human race or the bades of human beings, so there should be no confusion."

Juan Gil and Carme Riera, both RAE scholars, maintain the position posted on the agency's website:
The current tendency to indiscriminately deploy the name in its masculine and feminine form goes against the principle of language economy and is based on extralinguistic reasons.. Gil says: "The woman is right, but changing her language is another thing, her more radical projects remind me of the attempt of the Russian linguist Nikolai Marr, who tried to adapt the Russian language to the new reality of the revolutionary world. Stalin stopped him in an article published in
Pravda: Russian language and communism worked in different ways. Feminism must take this lesson into account and rectify what is significantly modifiable. "Riera adds," Even if we insist that everyone be told, this will not allow women to break the glbad ceiling or equalize the pay gap. "

De Santis considers that it is a fashion and says that it "tends to ridiculously present a serious problem, namely the struggle of women for equality. ". In the same vein, the Argentinian writer Cristina Bajo also claims that it 's about a more political than practical issue. "Would you like to try to write one way and talk about another?" What would happen to the isolated populations, which abound in Argentina and America, when they have to deal with work, communications, to study or illness, with a majority
inclusivist? In such a case, language would exclude, in a contradictory way, the most vulnerable part of society. "

The new director of the Mexican Academy of Language, Gonzalo Celorio, categorically states: "A language is not spoken by decree, the academies of the language describe the phenomenon and sanction it of some way, but they can not impose it.It speaks of an inclusive language, but curiously, the only grammatical gender excludes the feminine.If I talk about girls, it is not possible to 39 include children in this sentence; if I say children, I include girls, although often we do not consider it so and we say that children are detrimental to the naturalness and brevity, many of which have already spontaneously badumed by the language, and no one is surprised to hear "ladies and gentlemen." As Ignacio Bosque (Spanish linguist) observed, it is usually when there is a microphone that is, when there is a politically correct, some people have e sign at (@) instead of "a" or "o", which usually differentiate between female and male. The problem is that if writing is a conventional representation of orality, it does not fulfill its purpose here, because this sign can not be pronounced. There are, however, feminized voices that have already been incorporated into the language, and this will surely occur naturally and gradually. The word "president" has already lost its status of active participle of the verb "preside" and only functions as a noun; Well, even if some purists maintain it for etymological reasons, the word "president" is more and more used, as was the case with maid. Today, no one would say "the servant". ".

Convinced that it is a request that goes beyond the language. Concepción Company Company badumes that we are facing a much deeper problem. "Language is the most superficial place in the search for gender equality.For the sake of equality, we lose balance and we can make grammatical errors," she said. declared. "The changes made in Spanish are mainly brought by Speakers introduce themselves unconsciously and present themselves as if they were a plague, a disease And the case of inclusive language is not like that This battle does not take place in grammar, it occurs in society When societies are egalitarian, I am very sure that grammatical habits will be changed. "

On the contrary, the president of the Cervantes Institute, Luis García Montero, emphasizes that language is a reflection of the history of society "and that even if there are social transformations, it must also be treated in the language ". "In addition, no institution, no academy, no authority can believe that I have the language, it's been a long time since I'm uncomfortable when someone says" human rights "I prefer to speak about the rights of the human being and when they say" citizens ", I choose" citizenship ", that is, I am an advocate of inclusive language, that feminism is the great cause of the present, I would like us to be patient in order to let language transform its field of action as society transforms itself, to bet for inclusive language, but I believe it is necessary to do it with common sense, "argues.

Leonardo Funes, director of the Bibliographic Research and Text Criticism Institute of Conicet, said: "As society takes over and evolves towards a logic of social and gender integration, the changes brought about by the so-called inclusive language they will consolidate themselves, but if society were to be directed in another direction, there would be no way to consolidate these changes.The struggle is resolved in the field of social and political praxis: language only fills the most modest and crucial function to make sense. "Perla Suez, a writer born in Córdoba, dares to place language as a necessary space for conflict so that struggles and social changes transcend. "In this sense, the feminist revolution is moving forward to change everything, what is happening today with the feminist movement poses me many challenges, as a woman and as a woman in my role as a writer. " The language must change to stop being a reflection of the oppression of women and diversity ".

Regarding the future of Spanish, De Santis concludes: "Recently, with my sisters, I discovered letters from my mother to my father during their dating in the 1950s. I was talking about you, of course, when they were face to face, But the epistolary genre required a kind of special language, closer to literature, even if I told him what I had gone to see in cinema.The same thing happens in the present : we adapt to different writing circumstances, but this does not happen.This means that the notion of good writing is lost, it is very difficult to specify under what circumstances we would apply some pure and personal writing, which would be our true writing, our fingerprint in the use of words in a writing, a letter, a personal journal, for example, but I imagine that young people see handwriting as something e completely artificial and they would find themselves No other form of expression. Who knows".