Issue date: 11/28/07 Section: News

Media Credit: Jasmine Overton Luis Gabriel-Stheeman unraveled the complicated history of the Spanish language.

Luis Gabriel-Stheeman, associate professor of Spanish, spoke on the importance of making the Spanish language uniform, both in Spain and in Latin America, in his lecture titled "It's All in the Family: Language, Nation and Market in 21st Century Spain," on Nov. 15.

"Spain has four, some say five, official languages," Gabriel-Stheeman said. He explained that different areas of Spain deviated from the original form of Latin centuries ago when the Moors invaded.

Then, in the 18th century, the French took over the Spanish throne when Spain went bankrupt. There was a push to standardize the Spanish language, and with that came resentment from those forced to conform. "Some of them are still feeling that way," Gabriel-Stheeman said.

According to Gabriel-Stheeman, the steps to standardizing a language are selection, codification, elaboration and acceptance. He says acceptance is the hardest step.

"What we have to do is ... persuade people it's in their best interest," he said.

When Spain became an independent nation, peripheral areas of the country wanted to revert to their previous language. Since the 1800s, alternate languages have gone from legal to illegal and back many times.

It is currently legal to have other established languages in respective Spanish territories. However, there is a form of "affirmative action" for people who speak alternate languages, and Spaniards who speak Castilian, the standard form of Spanish, find this unfair.

"Latin American intellectuals also decided to create their own identity (when Spain became independent)," Gabriel-Stheeman said. Latin American leaders began having a say in grammar, which made the Spanish government worry about the Spanish language's future.

A solution came during the Cold War. "As soon as Spain entered NATO … a lot of money entered Spain," Gabriel-Stheeman said. This allowed Spain to re-colonize Latin America and work toward hispanofonìa, which is a common culture through language.

There was recently a new Spanish dictionary made with one primary difference - leaders of 20 Latin American countries co-signed the dictionary. This means world leaders are working toward a consensus of how the Spanish language should be spoken.

Even the king of Spain slips up on his grammar. He told a Latin American leader to "shut up" informally, a major Spanish faux-pas. Gabriel-Stheeman said, "Building this national image of Spain … has problems."

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