2023-04-24 03:03:09
Spanish speakers know that, although we share the same language, we have different ways of expressing ourselves depending on the country or region in which we grew up. How and when did these differences occur?
Dr. Luis Fernando Lara, emeritus professor at the Colegio de México, director of the Diccionario del Español de México and member of the Colegio Nacional explained the process of evolution of Spanish and referred to its current situation in the world in an interview with UN News on the occasion of the celebration of Spanish Language Day in which, in addition, he reflected on artificial intelligence and the future of the language, among other issues.
UN News: The first question I want to ask you, professor, is: what is the current situation of Spanish in the world? Can we say that we speak the same language in different Spanish-speaking countries?
Luis Fernando Lara: Yes, I would say that we all speak the same language. We all admit to speaking the same language. Naturally, throughout at least 500 years if we think only of Latin America, varieties of the Spanish language have been produced due to the different processes of colonization and after independence.
Colonization in America was not the same everywhere, so that since then varieties of Spanish that are difficult to recognize must have begun to be produced. That is one of the problems that those of us who are interested in the history of the language have, and they are difficult to recognise. because we need data. The only thing that survives, for example, letters or official texts, both religious and government, tends to reduce the variety that must have existed, so it is very difficult for us to recognize it, but the fact is that these variations occurred.
However, not only do we all say that we speak the same language, but we all understand each other in it, and that seems enormously important to me. For what is this? From the field of linguistics and Hispanic philology, I have been proposing a couple of concepts elaborated from the teachings of Eugenio Coseriu, the great Romanian linguist of the 20th century.
Based on this teaching, I propose that more than anything we talk about the cultured tradition of the Spanish language, national cultured traditions and popular traditions. What unites us is the cultured tradition. And of course, in each region we have our own national tradition. But there is a constant feeding between these traditions and also between cultured traditions and popular traditions, that is what makes it possible for us to understand each other well enough in Spanish. Although when we write only for our people, or when we write without being aware that there are other Spanish speakers, these differences become more apparent and that is when it is necessary to use a dictionary.
UN News: This year, precisely at the International Congress of the Spanish Language, the central theme of miscegenation and interculturality of the language was discussed. What does this mean? Does it have to do with what you just told us?
Luis Fernando Lara: Yes of course. In Spain, above all, it has become a general slogan to highlight miscegenation. Of course there has been miscegenation. I believe that there has not been a people in the world that does not receive contributions from other peoples. And the case of Spain is evident: Roman Spain, Muslim Spain, Visigothic Spain, of course they created a mestizo nation, and in the case of Spanish America, mestizajes were created with all the Amerindian peoples.
But interculturality goes beyond the Spanish language. It is the fact that we live in a perfectly interconnected world, where there are other enormously important languages, such as English, French, German, Chinese, Russian, that allow us to participate in the same culture, really in the culture of West, and that seems to me to be much more important.
UN News: Would you say that there are great divergences between the Spanish spoken on our continent and that of the Iberian Peninsula?
Luis Fernando Lara: If we go to popular traditions, yes, of course. Any of us who travels through a country other than his own there are times when he does not understand what they are talking about, but this corresponds to these national folk traditions. For example, in Mexico, we call public transportation that walks on wheels trucks. In Spain and elsewhere they are called buses. It is not that we ignore the word bus or that we do not use the word bus. When we go abroad, we remove our truck and talk about the bus.
These kinds of differences are everywhere. But it depends, I insist, on the level of the tradition in which one chooses to speak. If I choose to speak only within my popular tradition, I will produce many differences. If I rise up and go to my cultured tradition, there will be almost no difference.
UN News: You have spoken of a multicentric and multipolar language. What does this mean?
Luis Fernando Lara: In Spain, the idea of the multicentrism of the Spanish language has already spread, which is evident, if there are 22 Spanish-speaking countries, it is natural that in each one of them a national language has been produced and, therefore, each of them constitutes a center of the Spanish language. What I add is that not only is Spanish multicentric, but also multipolar, that is, there are certain poles of diffusion, some more important than the others.
If we look at it in terms of editorial capacity and film and television, it turns out that Madrid, of course, but also Barcelona, are poles of dissemination of Spanish. And in the case of America, Bogotá, Buenos Aires, Mexico and very probably Los Angeles, Miami and New York, which no one would consider as centers of the Spanish language, but which are poles of dissemination of the Spanish language. I think this is a difference worth taking into account.
Typing on cell phones is a kind of new shorthand.
UN News: In this process of movement in which languages are always found, which are never static, do you think that there is an affectation with the fever of the use of social networks, where everything is abbreviations, where spelling does not matter and where it is expressed sometimes more with emoticons than with words? Do you think that our vocabulary is being limited, that social networks and technological advances, instead of enriching our language, are limiting it?
Luis Fernando Lara: In the case of emoticons, what we are seeing is the appearance of a new hieroglyphic writing. If we think about the Egyptian or Mayan hieroglyphic writing, it turns out that it is a very limited writing, in accordance with the function that writing had in those ancient societies. Today, emoticons cannot in any way replace any language, they are a few hieroglyphics for joy, sadness, declaration, love, mockery, but they do not constitute a language, but simply a set of signs that each person has to interpret
On the other hand, writing on cell phones: there it is a kind of new shorthand. Years ago, all typists also had to learn shorthand, that is, a series of short strokes that allowed them to take dictation at high speed. I think that this has already disappeared and that it has been rendered useless precisely by the use of the computer. Now, this use of abbreviations constitutes a new shorthand. No secretary of 50 years ago would think that this shorthand would replace full writing. And what is happening now is that, indeed, unfortunately, there are people who find it easier to use abbreviated spellings instead of untying the full word. There what we are facing is a problem of education. All these computing instruments that the world is offering us are leading many people, especially young people and children, to separate themselves from languages and use pre-made schemes to write.
Lately, many prevention articles have appeared in the world regarding the system called Chat GPT. Because? Because in this system, which is very well built, of course, it turns out that one would no longer need to write a text, but would ask the system to write it by giving it certain coordinates to do so. I do believe that this is harmful for languages, not only for Spanish, because it alienates the speakers of their own language and then we are left to what the computer allows us to say. The same goes for automatic correction systems. When you use an automatic correction system and you want to use a relatively unusual intellectual vocabulary, the correction system corrects you when what you are looking for is precisely that intellectual vocabulary because it is what allows you to speak with absolute precision and clarity. Automatic correction systems are made for administrative languages, but not for a personal language and oriented to a complete, innovative, creative communication. For me that is a serious problem of education rather than talking about a problem of the language, it is not a problem of the language, it is of education.
UN News: Would you say that artificial intelligence endangers our language, or at least the beauty or intellectuality of the language?
louis fernando lara: I recognize that artificial intelligence has many advantages, many technological advantages, that is unquestionable. But in relation to the human being, it not only endangers languages, but it endangers the human being himself because it dehumanizes him, because it takes away responsibilities, because it takes away creativity, because it takes away personal relationships. Everything becomes a prefabricated relationship.
In that sense I do, and I think I’m not the only one, I want to draw attention to not allowing it. The school teacher or we, who are professors at the university, cannot allow a student to present us with a work that GPT Chat did or a work done by cutting and pasting texts from Wikipedia.
It is a question of education, in such a way that the school teacher, the university professor must guide the students not to start copying and pasting what he tells them, now I am talking about Wikipedia, but what any other source tells them.
UN News: What would the future of Spanish be in the face of all these innovations and in the face of all these elements so accelerated that they have appeared almost overnight, if we think about it in terms of the evolution of humanity?
Luis Fernando Lara: Let’s take into account that Spanish is the second most spoken language in the world after Chinese, before English, the second most spoken language as a mother tongue, it must be specified. That means that we have many millions of Spanish speakers and all these millions of Spanish speakers still have a lot of creativity. As long as we continue to use Spanish for our daily life and for intellectual knowledge, for scientific and technological knowledge, the future of Spanish is a future to which we cannot set limits. It would be bad if we gave up this creativity or if we fell into a very bad education in our countries, if the education systems were broken, if people stopped being educated in knowledge and in particular in science and technology.
The Hispanic world has traditionally been unproductive in science and technology compared to the world of Germanic languages. It’s a shame, but it’s a historical fact. This does not mean that we have it forbidden. What we have to do is convince our students and our scientists to express themselves in Spanish, because expression in the mother tongue has no rival even when one knows other languages.
UN News: There are several writers and journalists who say that it is archaic to refer to the language we speak today as Spanish and who propose a new name specifically for the Spanish spoken in America, which is also very varied. So they propose terms like ñamericano
Luis Fernando Lara: It seems ridiculous to me that they come to tell us that we no longer have to call the language Spanish, but Hispanic American or worse, Hispanic American. I would say: the Hispanic American to the pipe. That makes no sense.
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