Seoul, Dakar, Los Angeles and now New Delhi: the world remains small for the expansion of the Spanish language, taking into account the explanations of the director of the Cervantes Institute, Luis García Montero, at the IX International Congress of the Spanish Language which is celebrated in Cádiz. They are already active or soon to open, where the cultural institution expands its mission.
But where languages ??are played today, the future is a territory not delimited by physical borders, because the digital world does not understand passports. Technology and artificial intelligence rule, and the first vice-president, Nadia Calviño, in her speech in Cadiz, made it very clear: “Spanish will be one of the leading languages ??of the digital world”. Calviño expressed the need to “put Spanish on the train of the digital revolution”, and that’s why “we need to act now so that the new technologies, still incipient, speak common Spanish”.
In this sense, the Cervantes Institute and the RAE are working, and the challenges of artificial intelligence were also analyzed at the congress. “Knowledge and culture must be accessible to all citizens, through all means – declared Raquel Caleya Caña, director of culture at Cervantes – as there is nothing more foreign than a machine”. Caleya presented the Ethical Decalogue for a pan-Hispanic digital culture, in the session “Diversity and unity of the Spanish language”, where the activities in which the institute works were reviewed. Another novelty is the World Translation Map, which collects data on the history of translation since 1950. At the moment, it contains information on works published in Spanish and translated into 10 languages. Caleya summarized: “It is necessary to digitize the humanities and humanize the data”.
The director of Cervantes opened his speech by quoting Cabrera Infante: “He was right when he said that Spanish was too important to leave it in the hands of Spaniards, who are 8% of Spanish speakers”. The center of Los Angeles, “where there are 12 million Spanish speakers”, wants to avoid “linguistic marginalization” in the United States, said García Montero, which is why it is important that Spanish is a language of science and technology, and California is an important place.
Precisely, in the previous session, “Languages ??and intercultural education”, professor Kim Potowski, from the University of Chicago, had talked about the situation of Spanish in the country of Uncle Sam, where, contrary to what they expressed most of the interventions of the congress, “Spanish is a minority and minoritized language”.
“A child of a Mexican father and a Puerto Rican mother will speak the Mexican dialect if he grows up in Mexico and Puerto Rican if he lives in Puerto Rico. But what if he grows up in Chicago, where the dominant language is English ?”. The United States is a kind of dialect laboratory, where “the diversity of Spanish accents is mixed.” But the reality is that today “53% of the net of Spanish-speaking immigrants no longer speak it.” pointed out the teacher, who attributes the reason for this loss to the linguistic bullying of which Spanish speakers are victims.
The other side of the coin was presented by Daniel Cassany, UPF professor, who argued that “education must recognize that our brain is plurilingual and adopt more scientific practices” and “not monolingual, as happens often with the teaching of Spanish”. That’s why he believes that “the mentality needs to change and teach Spanish with respect for the languages ??of the learners”.
Outside the academic program, the day closed with a workshop on impromptu rap featuring artists Blon, MNak and NikiDMT, moderated by Queen Mary. A fight of roosters as succulent as the fight over the solo accent experienced recently in the RAE.