Spain's Linguistic Diversity and Scientific Vocabulary

Linguistic Diversity in Spain

Bilingualism refers to an individual's alternating use of two languages. Social bilingualism describes a community where two languages are used by individuals, who may be either monolingual or bilingual. Diglossia is a socio-cultural phenomenon involving a "high" language, used in formal communicative situations, compared with a "low" or colloquial language used within the family or informal settings.

Spain is indeed a multilingual nation. Article 3 of the Spanish Constitution recognizes this by declaring Castilian as the official state language, while also acknowledging other official Spanish languages in their respective autonomous communities. Since Franco's death, there has been a significant process of normalization for Galician, Catalan, and Basque. This involved the development of institutions designed to protect these languages, various official measures such as acts of linguistic standardization, and a substantial increase in their use in the media. Despite these advancements, situations of diglossia still persist.

Key Features of Spain's Linguistic Landscape

• Castilian remains the primary language for a high proportion of speakers across the Autonomous Communities.
• Catalan, Galician, and Basque are increasingly used, gaining prestige and sometimes leading to situations of rejection towards Castilian.
• Given that Catalan was the most established language, even among the urban bourgeoisie, its standardization has been faster than that of Galician and Basque, which were long marginalized in rural areas.

Scientific Language and Terminology

The characteristics of scientific language are the desire for accuracy, the search for objectivity, and the tendency towards universality. This necessitates a highly specialized scientific and technical vocabulary. Such language requires a unique signifier for each meaning, hence the continuous need to expand and update its terminology.

Tools for Scientific Terminology Development

Several tools are employed for the creation of terms and the enrichment of scientific terminology:

• Common words with specific meanings: Words from everyday language that acquire an unambiguous, specialized meaning in a particular field (e.g., force in physics).
• Standard word-formation procedures:
  • Derivation: Often through Greco-Latin prefixes (e.g., poly-, tele-, an- in words like Polarimetry, telemetry, anorexia) or suffixes (e.g., -ism, -sis in rheumatism, arteriosclerosis, osmosis).
  • Composition: Combining existing words (e.g., short circuit, microsurgery); includes hybrid compounds of Greek and English (e.g., electrocute, from 'electro' + 'execute'); and compound phrases, sometimes with proper names (e.g., fourth dimension, Pythagorean theorem).
• Loans: Especially from English, sometimes adapted (e.g., scanner) and sometimes not (e.g., bypass). This also includes semantic calques (e.g., acid rain, black holes).
• Creation of new terms by acronyms: Forming words from the initial letters of other words (e.g., radar, DNA, AIDS).
• Terms from other branches: Adopting terminology from different scientific or technical fields (e.g., computer viruses).