Spanish Language: Characteristics and Usage

Spanish Language: Characteristics and Usage

In 1998, the Cervantes Institute Yearbook presented the situation of Spanish in the world:

• Homogeneous Language: The Spanish language has a significant degree of leveling and a slight risk of fragmentation. Its relative homogeneity is based on the fact that Spanish has a simple vowel system (with only five vowel phonemes), a consonant system consisting of seventeen units common to all speakers, and a significant lexical and syntactic uniformity with few variations.
• Language of First-Order Culture: Spanish has been a very important vehicle for contributions to world culture and Western thought. It is enough to list authors in literature ranging from Cervantes to García Márquez.
• International Language: Spanish is the official language (in some cases co-official) in almost all South American countries. It is also an official language in the UN and all related organizations, in the European Union, the Organization of American States, and the Southern Common Market. Alongside English and French, it is one of the main languages of international communication.
• Geographically Compact Language: Most Spanish-speaking countries occupy contiguous territory.
• Expanding Language: Mainly throughout the twentieth century, Spanish has been the fastest-growing language demographically, thanks especially to its implementation in the Americas. The expansion is constant.
• Language with a High Communicability Index and a Low Diversity Index: A high percentage of speakers have Spanish as their mother tongue (about 95%).

The Pan-Hispanic Dictionary of Doubts

The Pan-Hispanic Dictionary of Doubts is a dictionary of regulatory concerns to the extent that its judgments and recommendations are based on today's rules governing the correct use of Spanish.

It aims to serve as an effective tool for anyone interested in improving their knowledge and command of the Spanish language. It answers the most common questions posed by the use of Spanish on each of the planes or levels that can be distinguished in the analysis of linguistic elements:

• Phonographic: It solves ontological questions (on pronunciation) and orthographic questions (on spelling, accentuation, and punctuation).
• Morphological: It provides guidance on the most common hesitations that occur at the level of nominal morphology (plural, feminine, and derived forms) and verbal morphology (forms of conjugation).
• Syntactic: It answers questions about construction and scheme, agreement, form, and use of idioms, etc.
• Lexicosemantic: It examines and corrects numerous lexical improprieties while providing guidance on the use of neologisms and foreign words.

Given the relative nature of the changing rule, the Pan-Hispanic Dictionary of Doubts consciously avoids, in most cases, the use of correct or incorrect descriptions, which tend to be interpreted categorically. Expressions that are more nuanced are often used, such as is discouraged as unusual, is not normal today and should be avoided, is not typical of educated speech, this is the majority and preferred, but also used, etc. As seen in the judgments and recommendations on the phenomena studied, criteria of validity, frequency, and extension into general educated use are combined and weighted.

Linguistic Variations in Spanish

a) Lisp, Yeísmo, Queísmo: This statement is true since, according to the article, Spain and America share not only the features of what might be called "general Spanish" but also many linguistic facts that appear to be variables, especially in the area of phonological and phonetic variation in grammar.

b) The Adjective "Archaic" Bravo: This statement would be false insofar as it is a broad term used in American areas. It might be viewed as archaic with respect to typical uses of Spanish in the Iberian Peninsula or in other areas, but not if the Hispanic domain is considered as a whole.

Linguistic Conservatism

Linguistic conservatism is the maintenance or preservation of linguistic elements (especially phonetic) that evolve in innovative areas or are lost. Conservative areas include areas such as Castilla (especially northern), the highlands of Mexico, the highlands of the Andean region, and the interior of Colombia. Innovative areas include areas such as Andalusia and the Canary Islands, the West Indies, and the coasts of South America.

Sociolect

Sociolect means the set of linguistic features that identify a social group. If we speak in a strict manner, a sociolect would be understood as all the features that characterize a social group. Thus, we could talk about youth sociolect, military sociolect, etc. However, it is customary to reserve this term for those linguistic facts that appear in a particular social stratum. This means that the term sociolect is often associated with the term "class," hence the talk of "high sociolects," "middle sociolects," and "low sociolects." High sociolects would shape the cultural language, and low and middle sociolects would shape the popular language.

Cultural Language

We understand cultural language as all those linguistic features that characterize the speech of the most educated, best-trained, and most prestigious community, e.g., managers, doctors, lawyers, teachers, etc. Generally speaking, this type of language is accessed through instruction, where written language plays a very important role.

Popular Language

The popular language is found mainly in the middle and lower socio-cultural strata. In this language, there are many dialect features, archaisms, colloquialisms, and vulgarisms that affect all linguistic levels: phonetic, lexical, grammatical, and discourse.

Vulgar Language

The vulgar language is very close to the popular language but has a feature that distinguishes it from the rest, and that is that the vernacular language breaks the rules. Vulgar applications are not openly accepted; they are often incorrect and non-consensual in certain contexts and situations. While the popular language moves within what is correct and permissible.