Standard Spanish

Standard Spanish comes from a medieval Castilian dialect. In 1085, the Castilians conquered the city of Toledo , the former capital of the Visigoth kingdom . The local dialect ( castellano ), which was spoken in Toledo from the 13th century, became the basis for the standard written Spanish. The first steps towards the standardization of the Castilian dialect were taken in the XIII century by King Alfonso X ("Alfonso the Wise"), who gathered scientists and translators at his court in Toledo. The king oversaw the drafting of documents, some of which he wrote himself, trying to make sure they were written in correct Castilian. During the reign of Alfonso X, court scholars wrote a large number of works on history, astronomy, law, and other fields of knowledge, many of which were translated from Arabic sources. This contributed to the dissemination of scientific knowledge in the newly established universities of Europe and influenced the cultural processes of Trecento .

The first step to the formal standardization of the language was the publication of the Grammar of the Spanish Language ( Spanish Gramática castellana ), published in 1492 by the famous historian, grammatist and poet Antonio de Nebrich . A great contribution to the development of the Spanish language was made by Juan de Valdez in his 1535 work Dialogo de la lengua . The initial stage in the history of the development of the Spanish language, conventionally covering the period between the 10th and 15th centuries, is called the Old Spanish ( Spanish: castellano antiguo ). The intermediate stage from Old Spanish to modern Spanish, the Spanish version of the period of the end of the XV - the end of the XVII centuries in Russian linguistics is called medieval Spanish ( Spanish español medieval ). Since the Old Spanish is quite close to the modern written Spanish, you can easily learn to read medieval Spanish documents. At the beginning of the 17th century, the written language used by officials from all regions of the Kingdom of Spain took the form that was finally settled as a norm by the Royal Spanish Academy in the next century. The Spanish language of the XVI — XVII centuries is sometimes called the classic Spanish language, due to the flourishing of literature of that period.

During the Spanish Empire, standard written Spanish was mainly based on the Madrid dialect, although its origin is sometimes associated with other cities, in particular, Valladolid ^[1] .

In the Spanish colonies in North and South America, the Madrid dialect in colloquial speech was quickly lost. Even in administrative centers, such as Lima and Mexico , the phonetics and grammar of local dialects differed markedly from the Castilian version. In the written version of the same Spanish variations were much less noticeable. This was due to the fact that during the colonial period the corpus of Spanish written sources was formed mainly in educational institutions, primarily universities, as well as the administrative and judicial bodies of Spain.

In 1713, the Royal Academy of Spanish was founded, whose main goal was the normalization of the language: “to correct the words and expressions of the Castilian language with the greatest possible decency, grace and purity” ^[2] . During the XVIII century, the Academy developed the means of standardization of the Spanish language, in particular, between 1726 and 1793, it published “a dictionary of Castilian language, which explains the true meaning of words, as well as their nature and quality, as well as phrases and forms of speech, proverbs, sayings and other issues related to the use of language ” ^[3] , in 1741 - the spelling of the Spanish language ^[4] , and in 1771 - the grammar of the Spanish language ^[5] . The words of the Spanish language used in Latin American countries began to be recorded in dictionaries as “Americanisms” from the 19th century.

The question of the standardization of the Spanish language became particularly relevant with the advent of electronic media , when carriers of various dialects gained access to radio, television and, more recently, the Internet. The weakness of the influence of the standard form of the language on the spoken language has become an important topic for discussion.

The existing linguistic centralism policy prompted some authors to argue that the problem of fragmentation of the Spanish language does not exist, and it is enough just to imitate the speech patterns of an educated group of native speakers. One author, for example, repeated the doctrine of Ramón Menéndez Pidal , stating that it is possible that [speakers] in one or several media outlets at some point may be disturbing because of the use of folks in their speech. [...] [At the same time] the needs of society and the cultural demands placed on these media [...] will require speakers of a higher level of language culture. Therefore, they will have a strong incentive both to improve their language proficiency and for its [language] unification ^[6] .

Problems in the sphere of colloquial Spanish have worsened at least since the 1950s, when, for commercial reasons, there was a need to formulate uniform requirements for film studios that worked with duplication of Spanish Hollywood films into Spanish: it was necessary to have common vocabulary, grammatical features and Spanish pronunciation that were not could be identified as belonging to any particular Spanish-speaking country. This goal soon proved unattainable: the desire to standardize the language prevented the transfer of linguistic means of subtle nuances of intimate or everyday tone. Nevertheless, it is possible to talk about the pursuit of a certain standardized phonetics in Latin America . Duplication, produced in Spain itself, differed in its characteristics quite significantly.

At the first International Congress of Spanish , which was held in 1997 in Zacatecas (Mexico), disagreements arose over the concept of standard Spanish. Some participants in the congress, in particular the Spanish writer , advocated the establishment of a kind of “common Spanish” that would include the minimum amount of general vocabulary of most dialects. Others, such as the journalist (director of the international radio station Radio Exterior de España ), denied the existence of the problem and expressed the idea that the Castilian dialect is superior to others. Finally, experts from Latin America, such as Lila Petrell, proposed the concept of the so-called “neutral Spanish” ( El . El español neutro ) ^[7] , which can be developed for use in purely descriptive texts, but the differences between dialects regarding semantics and pragmatists do not allow to form a single standard dialect, which would have the same linguistic value for all Hispanic. First of all, some grammatical structures cannot be formed in a neutral way due to differences in the verb conjugations used (for example, the use of the personal pronoun of the 2nd person vos in Argentina , Uruguay , Paraguay and Central America , while the other Spanish-speaking countries use the form tú , and most Colombians, as a rule, use usted for informal communication, and all three pronouns require different verb conjugations). Thus, one of the three versions of conjugation will always sound unusual in some Spanish-speaking country.

Taking into account the fact that a single neutral Spanish language is impossible for all Hispanic speakers, four standardized Spanish versions were used, used in translations, and more recently in the film production of some companies:

1. Castilian Spanish ( Spanish Dialecto castellano septentrional ) for Spain itself;
2. Rioplatski Spanish ( Spanish. Spanish rioplatense ) for Uruguay, Paraguay and Argentina (using Voseo );
3. Mexican Spanish ( Spanish. Spanish mexicano ) for the USA , Canada , Mexico , Central America (although the latter region largely uses Voso) and the rest of Hispanic America);
4. Spanish for international organizations such as the UN , OAS and their respective specialized bodies. It is obvious that, for example, Spanish for the UN is different from Spanish for the OAS, since Spain is not part of the OAS. Spain was admitted to the UN only in 1956, although, according to the UN Charter adopted in 1945, Spanish was among the official languages ​​of the UN .

In the television broadcasting market, Spanish-American America is viewed as a single territory for TV programs distribution, therefore TV programs are duplicated into the so-called “neutral Spanish”, which avoids idioms and words that may have negative connotations in any of the countries where these programs will be shown. This version of "American Neutral Spanish" has the following features:

• uses only the ustedes form for the second person plural pronoun, regardless of whether the appeal is formal or informal (as opposed to using the form vosotros for informal circulation in Spain);
• uses tú (and not vos ) for the pronoun of the second person singular;
• uses the single pronunciation of s, c (before e or i ) and z .

A trend is emerging towards the spread of “American neutral Spanish” in Colombia (due to the presence of many regional dialects), Venezuela (thanks to the industry of producing soap operas in Spanish) and Mexico, where most of the Spanish-language media is located.

American neutral Spanish had previously spread with television programs in Spain (in particular, with US cartoons) until they were duplicated in Spain itself.

Another motive for unifying Spanish is the need for multinational companies to translate manuals, localize software , websites , etc. from English to Spanish. Obviously, this is easier to implement, relying on one neutral version of the Spanish language, than creating different versions for each country or region, otherwise you would have to create more than twenty versions. The result was the formation of a neutral Spanish - a version that tries to avoid regional differences, such as Voseo , or terms that can be identified with specific countries (for example, for " computer " the term in Hispanic America is computadora , with the exception of a few countries that prefer computador , while in Spain the most frequent term is ordenador , as a result, Microsoft Windows uses the neutral term equipo ). This neutral Spanish is designed using glossaries that describe preferred terms and conditions that should be avoided.

• Bentivegna, Diego (1999), Amado Alonso y Américo Castro en Buenos Aires: entre la alteridad y el equilibrio , en Narvaja de Arnoux, E. y Bein, R. Práticas y, representaciones del lenguaje , Buenos Aires: EUDEBA, 1999. pp. 135—156
• Borges, Jorge Luis (1974), Obras Completas , Buenos Aires: Emecé.
• Castro, Américo (1941), La peculiaridad lingüística rioplatense y su sentido histórico , Buenos Aires: Losada
• Krashen, Stephen (1998): "Language shyness and heritage language development". In Krashen, S., Tse, L. and McQuillan, J. (eds.), Heritage language development . Culver City, CA: Language Education Associates. pp. 41-50
• VV. AA. (1998), Actas del Primer Congreso Internacional de la lengua española , Mexico DF: Siglo XXI.