Foundation of Urgent Spanish
Encyclopedia
The Fundéu BBVA is a non-profit organization
created in February 2005 in Madrid
, Spain. The Foundation was created in collaboration with the Real Academia Española
, and is founded under the Department of Urgent Spanish of Agencia EFE. It took its new name Fundéu BBVA in 2008.
. Other primary main objectives of the Foundation include:
words and phrases that have begun to influence the language. An example from the Manual reads:
The manual also clears up any misinterpretations of how proper Spanish would utilize diverse linguistic aspects, such as pronunciation, orthography, and punctuation. For example, in regards to “el seseo” and “el ceceo
” (the varying regionalistic ways that the letters ‘s’, ‘c’ and ‘z’ may be pronounced), the Manual of Urgent Spanish says:
which serves as a resource tool of the recognized use of Spanish. With the contribution of the Spanish community, frequent doubts can be consulted and corrected by using the Wikilengua webpage. Being open and accessible to everyone, Wikilengua may also serve as a medium to reflect the diversity and richness of Spanish in its multiple varieties spoken in more than twenty-one countries.
Wikilengua is open and free of charge for reading and contributing. Wikilengua is constructed and grows around a community of authors, translators, editors, linguists, professors, students, journalists, and in general all people who are interested in Spanish, individually or as part of some entity, that would like to share their knowledge with hundreds of millions of other Spanish-speakers.
Wikilengua is licensed under Creative Commons CC-BY-SA.
Non-profit organization
Nonprofit organization is neither a legal nor technical definition but generally refers to an organization that uses surplus revenues to achieve its goals, rather than distributing them as profit or dividends...
created in February 2005 in Madrid
Madrid
Madrid is the capital and largest city of Spain. The population of the city is roughly 3.3 million and the entire population of the Madrid metropolitan area is calculated to be 6.271 million. It is the third largest city in the European Union, after London and Berlin, and its metropolitan...
, Spain. The Foundation was created in collaboration with the Real Academia Española
Real Academia Española
The Royal Spanish Academy is the official royal institution responsible for regulating the Spanish language. It is based in Madrid, Spain, but is affiliated with national language academies in twenty-one other hispanophone nations through the Association of Spanish Language Academies...
, and is founded under the Department of Urgent Spanish of Agencia EFE. It took its new name Fundéu BBVA in 2008.
Responsibilities
The foundation, in the words of its president, director of la Real Academia Española, Víctor García de la Concha, “is a fundamental step towards the unity of the language, it collaborates for the compliance of its objectives with all those institutions related to the defense of Spanish”. The main responsibility of the Foundation is to maintain the unity and “purity” of the Spanish languageSpanish language
Spanish , also known as Castilian , is a Romance language in the Ibero-Romance group that evolved from several languages and dialects in central-northern Iberia around the 9th century and gradually spread with the expansion of the Kingdom of Castile into central and southern Iberia during the...
. Other primary main objectives of the Foundation include:
- To promote good usage of Spanish in all media, including, but not limited to, print, radio, television, and Internet
- To provide uniform criteria in the usage of Spanish
- To respond quickly to language questions through its inquiry service
- To devise linguistic reports on new difficulties that arise in the Spanish language and to broadcast them
- To publish and update the Manual of Urgent Spanish, which serves as a form of dictionary for the Agency EFE
- To issue Certificates of Linguistic Quality. These are offered to the publications that adhere to the recommendations of the Fundéu, and guarantee its idiomatic correction. Businesses, companies and institutions can hire the service of quality control of the foundation for its memories, pamphlets, instruction manuals, web pages or advertising backups.
- To edit specialized books about linguistic questions
- The Foundation has created and maintains a web page in which the elaborated materials by the foundation can be found.
The Manual of Urgent Spanish
The Manual of Urgent Spanish is an important tool in maintaining the purity of the Spanish language. It is also responsible for clearing up any misunderstandings pertaining to the Spanish language. One of the latest preoccupations of the Manual has been to proscribe SpanglishSpanglish
.Spanglish refers to the blend of Spanish and English, in the speech of people who speak parts of two languages, or whose normal language is different from that of the country where they live. The Hispanic population of the United States and the British population in Argentina use varieties of...
words and phrases that have begun to influence the language. An example from the Manual reads:
Jugar un papel – la locución jugar un papel aparece con bastante frecuencia en las noticias y se emplea cada vez más en el español tanto escrito como hablado, sin tener en cuenta que no es correcta… Entre las dieciocho acepciones que tiene el verbo jugar en español, no hay ninguna que autorice la expresión jugar un papel anglo-galicismo que tiene sus raíces en el ingles “to play a role” y en el francés “jouer un rôle”… Jugar un papel en el sentido de “desempeñar una función”, “cumplir con una misión o encargo”, “estar de acuerdo con la posición”… es traducción servil y locución tan inadmisible y ajena a nuestra lengua como lo sería decir “jugar una comedia” (to play a comedy) o “jugar al piano” (to play the piano).
The manual also clears up any misinterpretations of how proper Spanish would utilize diverse linguistic aspects, such as pronunciation, orthography, and punctuation. For example, in regards to “el seseo” and “el ceceo
Ceceo
In Spanish dialectology, the terms distinción, seseo and ceceo are used to describe the opposition between dialects that distinguish the phonemes and , and those that exhibit merger of the two sounds into either or .Dialects that distinguish the two sounds, and thus pronounce the words casa...
” (the varying regionalistic ways that the letters ‘s’, ‘c’ and ‘z’ may be pronounced), the Manual of Urgent Spanish says:
[E]l seseo, es decir, la pronunciación de las letras c y z como s, es característico de algunas zonas meridionales de la Península, de las islas Canarias y de América. Esta pronunciación está admitida por la norma culta. No así el ceceo (pronunciación de la s como z).
Wikilengua
The Foundation of Urgent Spanish has recently (2008) launched Wikilengua, a wikiWiki
A wiki is a website that allows the creation and editing of any number of interlinked web pages via a web browser using a simplified markup language or a WYSIWYG text editor. Wikis are typically powered by wiki software and are often used collaboratively by multiple users. Examples include...
which serves as a resource tool of the recognized use of Spanish. With the contribution of the Spanish community, frequent doubts can be consulted and corrected by using the Wikilengua webpage. Being open and accessible to everyone, Wikilengua may also serve as a medium to reflect the diversity and richness of Spanish in its multiple varieties spoken in more than twenty-one countries.
Wikilengua is open and free of charge for reading and contributing. Wikilengua is constructed and grows around a community of authors, translators, editors, linguists, professors, students, journalists, and in general all people who are interested in Spanish, individually or as part of some entity, that would like to share their knowledge with hundreds of millions of other Spanish-speakers.
Wikilengua is licensed under Creative Commons CC-BY-SA.