María Ramírez, deputy managing editor of elDiario.es, wrote an article for the Guardian a week or so ago about how Spanish is constantly evolving, and how people seem largely to accept it.
“With some 600 million speakers around the world, Spanish has evolved over centuries and is now being pushed in new directions, especially in the US, where populations from different nationalities mix and interact with English speakers from a wide variety of backgrounds…….. Of course, as with any subject where identity and history intersect, Spanish speakers do have their disagreements and debates about language. But nothing compares to the intensity with which some British people seem to react to the use of American English.”
She goes on: “Thanks to the arrival of millions of people from the Americas in the past two decades, the Spanish spoken in Spain is more varied and expressive than ever, with a wider range of nuance”. And the Royal Spanish Academy, the institution responsible for producing the official Spanish dictionary, has now adopted a more global view of the language. “As is often the case with Spanish in Latin America, usage and context enriches the word”, she says.
“Spanish is the language that never ends,” said Nicaraguan writer Sergio Ramírez. For Maria Ramírez, “the richness that emerges from collective use, across continents and communities, is what keeps languages alive and thriving…. The many variations we share are not obstacles: they are a testament to the resilience, creativity and beauty of our languages.”
Read the article in The Guardian, here.
Picture above: throughout Spanish-speaking South America, the sign at the end of the road is the Spanish ‘Pare’. Why here in Spain do we use the English word, ‘Stop’?