Two monumental volumes of Spanish grammar were released by the Royal Spanish Academy last Thursday.
The Real Academia Española (RAE) is Spain's official institution for regulating the Spanish language, and has often been criticized for its stuffy, conservative approach to the language.
The Nueva gramática de la lengua española marks a change of direction, however. The 4,000-page work aims to reflect the full breadth of Spanish, both regionally and globally, taking a much less prescriptive approach to usage.
"Here are all the voices, all the ways of speaking, coming together in a grand polyphony," said RAE President Victor Garcia de la Concha at last week's launch in Madrid. "This book comes from the people, and it is to the people that it reaches out." He added that "rules are set by speakers. What the academy does is observe and document."
The RAE's first grammar since 1931 was compiled over a period of 11 years by the organization's 22 associated Spanish academies worldwide. For the first time it takes into account the many regional variants, with a heavy focus on Latin America, where Spanish is most widely spoken.
The new approach eschews the widely held myth that only one variant of a language can be considered "correct," instead reflecting the academic consensus that variations are not errors, but simply differences.
At the launch, King Juan Carlos of Spain declared that he was "moved by and proud of what we all do for our language," as he held a copy of the book.
A third volume will be released in 2010.
13 December 2009
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