What are the academies of the language and what do they do?

The Royal Spanish Academy (RAE) was founded in 1713 by the Spanish state. Its main objective is to preserve the unity of Castilian or Spanish in the Spanish-speaking world. His two most famous instruments are grammar and dictionary. Although he states that they are descriptive (that is, they say how people speak and what words mean), the truth is that prescribe how we should speak and what "good" meanings should be.

This is done by selecting the "most prestigious linguistic variety", with more political or economic criteria than the language criteria. We all know that Spanish is spoken differently depending on the places and situations. Not only we, the Argentineans, speak Spanish in the same way: there are also peculiarities in each country: the cantito cordobés (here they explain how to learn it), the meaning of the words (a "porrón de cerveza" in Santa Fe has a liter, in Buenos Aires, 300 cm3), the temporal correlation ("I would like that it lasts forever "", Sing Juanse, and no one is scandalized because he does not say "I want it to last …").

By making a unique dictionary and grammar, the Academy chooses the forms and meanings it considers "correct" (better, more "accurate", more "elegant") and rejects others. ¿Adivina What is the variety that RAE has always selected? You guessed it: the one spoken by the middle and upper sectors of Madrid and its surroundings.

Since the independence of the American nations, many intellectuals have started to criticize the RAE: why should a foreign government tell us how to talk? Should not we also have linguistic independence? Sarmiento had proposed, in 1843, to liberate the Americans from "z", "v" and "u" dumb in "-gue" and "-que". The rule was this: if in America we do not pronounce these sounds, it is not necessary to write them. Although its orthographic reform has not succeeded, often discordant voices are heard and require changes in the academies.

In 2004, at the International Congress of the Spanish Language of Rosario (famous for Fontanarrosa's speech about puteadas), the RAE and the Association of Academies of the Spanish Language (ASALE), entity bringing together the 23 academies of other predominantly Spanish-speaking country, signed the document "New Panhispanic Language Policy". What's he saying? Basically, from then on, the normative model would no longer be the one proposed by the RAE, but the consensus with all the academies, who would be co-responsible for the development of the dictionary and grammar. But in practice, the linguistic norm continues to be, with a few exceptions, the Castilian of Madrid, although no one does it now.

The RAE dictionary

We know it since childhood: we searched for "concha", for example, and made jokes between what was in the dictionary and what our clbadmates said in school. Over time, instead of laughing at grammar and dictionary, we have increasingly seen them as the highest authorities on what is good or bad to say. How is this pbadage made? Through the policies of the Academy, such as the binding nature of its guidelines in the legal and administrative fields, in the media and, basically, in schools. By making the RAE the authority over the language, we give the Spanish state the sovereignty over the content taught in our clbadrooms.

In recent years, linguistic criticism and the activism of political, social, religious and ethnic groups have allowed RAE to revise some controversial meanings. This is the case of the "weaker bad", defined as "women's group", which clarifies since 2014 only its use "with contemptuous or discriminatory intent"; or "marriage", which only defines "the formal union of a man and a woman" and now adds the union of two people of the same bad. There are still articles that show Spanish centralism. As we see, there is the case of "pollera", which leaves the American use in ninth place, after several meanings that no one uses anymore. And in "take", is only the definition that the Argentines seem more usual in the number 31. All the others are exclusive meanings of Spain.

So, do academies serve?

Academies serve to stop the constant change of language because, when more people talk in a certain way, it is easier to sell ideas, products and services. Governments do not always understand the importance of this process and are willing (sometimes) to defend the rights of pirate producers, but not those of the speakers.

The answer to the expansive and centralizing policy of the RAE can not be indifference, but the formulation of sovereign national and regional language policies taking into account the diversity of languages ​​and the people who speak them.

* Linguist Professor at the National University of San Martín, researcher CONICET.

** linguist. Professor at the National University of Buenos Aires, researcher at CONICET.