Say it isn’t so, Vance!
Leave a reply
Category Archives: Spanish in the world
Spanish sign language
First, a personal note: I’m delighted to announce that I’ve signed a contract with Bloomsbury Academic Press to publish the book I’ve been working on the last few years, tentatively titled ¿Por qué? 101 Questions about Spanish. If you like my blog, you’ll love the book! Stay tuned for updates on the publication process. So far I’ve written 70 questions, so there’s a ways yet to go.
Lately I’ve been looking into Spanish sign language and wanted to share a terrific website, Sématos.eu, an on-line video dictionary of Lengua de signos española (LSE) and Lengua de signos catalana (LSC). Yes, there are separate sign languages for castellano and catalán (wouldn’t you know?) Here are the signs for artista in LSE and LSC.
The LSE/LSC split is just the beginning of the diversity of the Spanish sign language situation. Every Spanish speaking country has its own sign language, or even more than one. Some of these, including the sign languages of El Salvador, Bolivia, Costa Rica, the Dominican Republic, and Puerto Rico, derive from American Sign Language (which itself comes from French Sign Language, or LSF). Mexican sign language comes also from LSF, while Venezuelan sign languages is based on LSE. Many countries developed their own sign languages independently. This group includes Spain, Argentina, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, Guatemala, and Nicaragua.
Nicaraguan sign language has given researchers a rare opportunity to observe the genesis of language, both first-hand and retrospectively. The Nicaraguan deaf community only coalesced in 1977, when a special education school opened in Managua, soon joined by a vocational center attended by many of the school’s graduates. Within six years enrollment in the two institutions had topped 400: a critical mass. By 1986 the idioma de señas de Nicaragua had taken shape and linguists began to catalog its progress. Today’s Nicaraguan deaf community includes the full spectrum of ISN signers, from children who are learning ISN as a first language to middle-aged Nicaraguans who participated in its creation. It’s a great population to study.
A good place to learn more about the various sign languages of the Spanish-speaking world is the SIL International website. (Obviously that list includes other countries too, but you can skip them.) The Nicaragua entry has lots of detail and references.
Here is an interesting article (en español, but with a link for English) from El País about endangered languages in Mexico.
Spanish is normal, English is weird
“Spanish is normal, English is weird” is a frequent theme in my classroom. Students coming from a monolingual English background are quick to assume the contrary: that where Spanish and English differ, Spanish is the oddball. I consider it part of my responsibility to shake up their world view a little, playing Copernicus to their Aristotle.
Below I detail six examples of this principle: three from pronunciation, one from spelling, and two from grammar. Readers are invited to contribute others.
Pronunciation
- English versus Spanish /r/. As described earlier on this blog, Spanish has two types of /r/: the rolling trill of carro and the short flap of caro. According to a cross-linguistic survey by Berkeley professor Ian Maddieson, both of these are are more common in the languages of the world than the gliding /r/ of English.
- English versus Spanish vowels. Spanish has five vowel sounds, corresponding to the five vowel letters aeiou. In contrast, English has 12 distinct vowel sounds – those heard in beet, bit, bait, bet, bat, bot, bought, boat, book, boot, butt, and the unstressed first syllable of baton. As described in an earlier post, a five or six-vowel system is the most common type worldwide. The most vowel sounds found in any language is 14, making English quite the outlier.
- English versus Spanish syllable structure. English has an impressive ability to combine individual consonant sounds into groups. The single syllable of strengths, my favorite example, begins with three consonants (/s/, /t/, and /r/) and ends with four (/ŋ/, /k/, /θ/, and /s/). Spanish is more restrictive. It allows at most two consonants before or after a vowel, and these are strictly limited (thereby hangs a future post…). Here again English is an outlier: most languages allow only limited consonant combinations, as in Spanish.
Writing: capitalization. English capitalizes more words than Spanish: not just proper nouns, but also the pronoun I, days of the week, months of the year, and various other categories. Here English is truly an oddball: it is the world’s second most exuberant user of capital letters, behind only German.
Grammar
- Singular and plural “you”. My oh my, how Spanish students struggle with singular tú and usted versus plural vosotros and ustedes. I routinely encounter students who have been studying Spanish for three or four years and are still convinced that ustedes (“you all”) means “they”. This is partly because the verb forms for ustedes are identical to those for ellos/ellas (“they”), but mostly, and more profoundly, because English lacks a plural “you” (leaving aside the dialectal form y’all). In this regard Spanish is, again, normal. David Ingram’s classic (1978) survey “Typology and Universals of Personal Pronouns” found that 67 of 71 languages reviewed had both singular and plural “you”.
- Noun-adjective order. Spanish speakers say casa blanca instead of white house, and so on for most pairings of a noun and its modifying adjective. The Spanish word order is found in over half the languages of the world. It has always struck me as the logical order in terms of sentence processing: that way, one starts with the basic concept (“house”), and then “decorates” it with details of color and the like.
What makes Spanish unique
[Today is Spanish Friday so this post is in Spanish. ¡Scroll down for English translation!]
¿Cómo es único el español?
He ido pensando recientemente en los pocos aspectos únicos que conozco del español, los aspectos que diferencian el español de los otros idiomas del mundo. Si algún lector puede sugerir otros aspectos únicos, o eliminar alguno de los míos, claro que estaré contenta de revisar mi pequeña lista. Ignoro el vocabulario porque cada idioma tiene un vocabulario único.
El primer elemento único que conozco del español es ortográfico: las marcas invertidas. La Real Académica inventó la ¿ y la ¡ en el año 1754, una mejora dramática a su propuesta previa (de 1741) de usar las marcas normales (? y !) al comienzo y al final de preguntas y exclamaciones. Según mi conocimiento, ningún otro idioma ha adoptado estas marcas. No sé por qué no; a mí me parecen muy útiles.
El segundo elemento es de gramática: la existencia de dos paradigmas flexionales paralelos. Este fenómeno se encuentra en el imperfecto del subjuntivo, que se puede conjugar o con ‑ra, -ras, etc. o con -se, -ses, etc. (Dos ejemplos son hablara / hablase y comiéramos / comiésemos.) Según mis investigaciones, el español es el único idioma con tal redundancia. Los otros ejemplos de redundancia gramatical que conozco en otros idiomas se limitan a vocabulario y formas específicos. Un ejemplo es las dos (o tres) conjugaciones del verbo francés asseoir en el presente, el imperfecto, y unos (no todos) otros tiempos verbales, y las dos terminaciones plurales genitivas -den y -tten para ciertas palabras finlandesas.
El tercer elemento único es cultural: el español tiene el órgano lingüístico académico más activo e internacional del mundo. La Asociación de Academias de la Lengua Española, (ASALE) la organización cuyo miembro más famoso es la Real Academia Española, es increíblemente activa en cuanto a publicaciones y reuniones, y también resolutamente internacional en su estructura y sus publicaciones. De los pocos otros órganos académicos existentes de idiomas internacionales, el mejor conocido, la Académie Française, solo representa Francia, el órgano alemán solo se preocupa por la ortografía, y las instituciones del árabe y del portugués son poco activas.
Finalmente, el español es el idioma internacional más hablado. El chino tiene más hablantes, claro, pero el español es más internacional, como idioma oficial de países en cuatro continentes: Norteamérica, Sudamérica, África y Europa.
Además de estos aspectos, sospecho que el sistema pronominal español es únicamente complejo. De los otros idiomas que conozco, ninguno tiene reglas tan complicadas de posición (¿antes o después del verbo?) ni de combinación (el fenómeno de le –> se). Pero sería un gran trabajo investigativo confirmar esto.
————————————————————————————————————–
I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the few aspects of Spanish that I believe to be unique: those not found in any other language. If a reader can suggest others, or disprove one that I propose, I would be happy to modify my short list.
The first unique element of Spanish has to do with spelling: the upside-down punctuation marks. The Spanish language academy invented ¿ and ¡ in 1754, a dramatic improvment over its previous proposal (in 1741) to use the normal punctuation marks ? and ! at the beginning and end of questions and exclamations. As far as I know, no other language has adopted these symbols. I don’t know why; they seem pretty useful to me.
The second unique element is grammatical: the existence of two alternative inflectional paradigms. This phenomenon is seen in the Spanish imperfect subjunctive, which can be conjugated with forms ending in -ra, -ras, etc. or with -se, -ses, etc. (Two examples are hablara / hablase and comiéramos / comiésemos.) According to my research, Spanish is the only language with such a drastic redundancy in its grammar. Other examples of grammatical redundancy are restricted to specific vocabulary and/or forms. One example is the two (or even three!) possible conjugations of the French verb asseoir in certain verb tenses; another is the two possible genetive plural endings -den and -tten for certain Finnish nouns.
The third unique element is cultural: Spanish has the most active and international academic language organization in the world. The Asociación de Academias de la Lengua Española, (ASALE), whose most famous member is Spain’s Real Academia Española, is amazingly active in terms of publications and conferences, and is also resolutely international in its structure and publications. Of the few existing academic groups for other international languages, the best known, the Académie Française, only represents France, the German organization only focuses on spelling, and the Arab and Portuguese institutions are, as far as I can tell from their web pages, relatively inactive.
Finally, Spanish is the international language with the greatest number of speakers. Chinese has more speakers, of course, but Spanish, unlike Chinese, is an official language in four continents: North and South America, Africa, and Europe.
Besides these four aspects, I suspect that the Spanish pronominal system is also unique for its complexity. Of the other languages I know, none has more complicated rules for pronoun positioning (before or after the verb) and interaction (the nasty le –> se business). But it would take a serious effort to research this question properly.
Another day, another Spanish idiom
Yesterday I came across an interesting article on El País about the founding of the Real Academia Española, one of my favorite institutions. The article relates, with a lamentable lack of detail, how a group of eight Spaniards began meeting in 1713 to create the first Spanish dictionary. Three other colleagues soon joined the project, it received royal sanction the following year, and the rest is (linguistic) history. Missing from the article are the founders’ identities (besides the Marqués de Villena) and backgrounds (more nobility? writers? scholars?). Still, it’s an inspiring tale.
As usual, I read the article with an eye out for unfamiliar vocabulary. All I encountered was a novel (to me) expression: the author compares the RAE’s founding to cuatro gatos [que] se lanzaban al abismo (“four cats who jumped into an abyss”). Lanzarse al abismo was clearly a metaphor for starting a venture into the unknown. Cuatro gatos, on the other hand, seemed purely idiomatic.
Thanks to an appeal to the friendly folks on the wordreference.com Spanish-English vocabulary forum, and a Google search that yielded similar results, I learned that cuatro colloquially refers to a small quantity (in English we’d say “a handful”) and gato can be slang for “person”. (Wordreference.com itself gives a slang interpretation of gato as “person from Madrid”, but the usage seems to be more general.) So the mystery sentence boiled down to “a small group of people started an uncertain venture”.
I love the parallel between this use of gato and the English slang meaning of cat as “a cool person”. The choice of cuatro to stand for “a handful” is also pleasing. As a rule of thumb, I think of three as “a few” and five as “several”; four is right in between. From a literary perspective it was also rather bold to mix literal numbers (8 and 11 founding members) with the metaphorical number 4.
Still, it’s hard to shake off the image of a cat playing a lemming…
Unas similitudes casuales entre el español y el hebreo
[Today is Spanish Friday so this post is in Spanish. ¡Scroll down for English translation!]
En honor de la temporada actual de los días festivos judíos (Rosh Hashana y Yom Kippur), decidí señalar unas similitudes entre el español y el hebreo. Estas similitudes son completamente casuales. Es decir que los dos idiomas no están nada relacionados. El español es un idioma románico, de la familia indo-europea, y el hebreo es semítico, de la familia afroasiática. Ni han tenido los dos idiomas bastante contacto geográfico como para influenciarse. Al contrario, estas similitudes son una muestra de tendencias lingüísticas generales.
- El español y el hebreo tienen sustantivos masculinos y femeninos.
- En los dos idiomas, los adjetivos y artículos tienen que concordar con el género y número del sustantivo que describen.
- En los dos idiomas, los adjetivos siguen los sustantivos.
- Los dos idiomas tienen el sonido gutural que en español se escribe con j o g (antes de /e/ e /i/).
- Los dos idiomas tienen cinco vocales: /a/, /e/, /i/, /o/, y /u/.
- Los dos idiomas tienen tres tiempos verbales: pasado, presente, y futuro.
- Los dos idiomas tienen distintas clases de verbos en cuanto a la conjugación: las categorías -ar, -er, e -ir del español, y los siete binyanim del hebreo.
- Las conjugaciones del pasado y del futuro de los dos idiomas reflejan tres personas (primera persona, segunda persona, tercera persona) y dos números (singular y plural).
- En los dos idiomas los complementos directos se señalen con un marcador distinto: el a personal en español y et en hebreo, aunque aquello se limita a complementos directos humanos.
****************************************************************
In honor of the current Jewish High Holiday season, I decided to point out some similarities between Spanish and Hebrew. These similarities are completely coincidental because the two languages aren’t at all related. Spanish is a Romance language from the Indo-European family, and Hebrew is a Semitic language from the Afro-Asiatic family. Nor have the languages had enough geographical contact to influence each other by borrowing. Rather, these similarities are evidence of general linguistic tendencies.
- Spanish and Hebrew have masculine and feminine nouns.
- In both languages, adjectives and articles must agree in number and gender with the nouns they modify.
- In both languages, adjectives follow nouns.
- Both languages have the guttural /x/ sound (written with a j or g in Spanish).
- Both have five vowel sounds: /a/, /e/, /i/, /o/, and /u/.
- Both have past, present, and future verb tenses.
- Both have distinct verbal conjugation classes: -ar, -er, and -ir verbs in Spanish, and the seven binyanim in Hebrew.
- Past and future conjugations in the two languages reflect three persons (first, second, and third person) and two numbers (singular and plural).
- Both languages have a direct object marker: the a personal in Spanish and et in Hebrew, although the former is limited to human direct objects.
Top 10 reasons why I’m a fan of the Spanish Real Academia
I’ve been a fan of the Real Academia Española, or RAE, the Spanish language Academy, for years. The Academy, in case you’re not familiar with it, is a scholarly organization of professors, writers, journalists, and translators. Every Spanish-speaking country has its own Academy. Together, the various Academies form the Asociación de Academias de la Lengua Española. The RAE is the Academy of Spain itself, founded in 1713. However, the term RAE is often used to refer to the overall Asociación, both for convenience and because the RAE retains a lead role: for example, hosting the Asociación‘s on-line dictionary.
Here are the top 10 reasons why I’m a fan of the Academia system. This slideshow is full of links; please let me know if any fail for you.
¿What’s in a Spanish name?
In today’s New York Times, Pamela Paul describes the challenges that she faces because, like many women in the United States, she uses her maiden name in professional contexts and her married name otherwise. These include practical issues, like whether her husband can use her Costco card; emotional challenges, like her children’s “permanent state of confusion”; and even legal issues. Ms. Paul was once detained at an airport for 40 minutes because her ticket and her ID had different names.
Since I’m always wearing my “Spanish glasses”, so to speak, I was immediately struck by how unnecessary these issues must seem to folks who follow the Hispanic naming system. Married women keep the same two last names they’ve had since birth: one apellido from their father and one from their mother. They can optionally add de X to show that they’re married to a Sr. X. This seems somewhat sexist, implying that a wife is her husband’s property, but at least it’s simple and consistent.
A celebrity example may be in order. The adorable Suri Cruise’s full name, Hispanic-style, would be Suri Cruise Holmes, after her father (Tom Cruise) and mother (Katie Holmes). If she were to marry, say, Knox Pitt Jolie (the son of Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie), she could optionally go by the longer name Suri Cruise Holmes de Pitt. Suri and Knox’s children would all have the last names Pitt Cruise.
I don’t have a dog in this hunt, personally. I kept my maiden name and haven’t had many problems with it. In fact, it’s a useful way to weed out sales calls, since the caller will often ask for me by my husband’s name or the reverse. But I do sometimes wish that the United States followed the Hispanic system so that there would be no ambiguity.
I’d love to hear from some readers from Spanish-speaking countries about their personal experiences with apellidos. How often do women use the de X convention? Is there any confusion with school registrations or other formalities involving children? Are you happy to be following the Hispanic system?
New Spanish vocabulary from “la crisis”
I enjoyed a recent article in the New York Times about new economic-crisis-inspired vocabulary in Spanish and other European languages. The Spanish terms mentioned are the following. I’ve included glosses for non-transparent meanings, and links where available.
- los hombres de negro: European Union officials
- prima de riesgo
- bonus (a borrowing from English)
- burbuja in the sense of an economic bubble
- población activa: working population
- ni-ni: a young person neither studying nor working (my favorite on this list)
- indignado: economic protester
- yayoflauta: an older person who protests on behalf of younger people
- marea blanca: protester from the medical community
- troika: IMF, ECB, and EC
This cartoon illustrates both “yayoflauta” and “indignado”. Make sure to check out the other cartoons on the site.
According to the Times article, the Real Academia Española, or RAE (the international Spanish language Academy) has added or modified 200 crisis-inspired words this year, including several of those above. Being a big fan of the RAE, I went onto their website to confirm the Times‘s reporting. I found two contradictions: neither serious, but I’m listing them just to be thorough.
- The Times reports that población activa refers to people old enough to work, but the RAE definition (see link above) doesn’t mention age. Also, this is not a recent addition or modification.
- I couldn’t find prima de riesgo in the RAE, although the dictionary recently added nine (!!!) other new risk-related expressions.
A technical note: some of the links above are to special pages on the RAE website for new or modified words. It’s possible that these links will malfunction once the new words or meanings are incorporated into the main RAE dictionary. In that case, you will be able to find them using the normal RAE search page.