February 15, 2009
BY FABIOLA SANTIAGO
The United States is the world's second-largest Spanish-speaking country, surpassed in the number of Spanish speakers only by Mexico, and to measure the influence of Spanish in contemporary mainstream America one need only to channel-surf.
On public television, there's Gwyneth Paltrow on a ride through the Catalonian countryside in a convertible, showing off her considerable Spanish vocabulary to chef Mario Batali, who's not bad himself. Paltrow says she's made learning Spanish a priority for daughter Apple. She buys DVDs in Spanish, and ''Dora, la exploradora'' is Apple's favorite cartoon character.
''Per-r-r-r-fecto,'' Paltrow says, demonstrating her deftness at rolling her r.
On another channel, the preteen generation is also speaking Spanish in a joint movie production between Disney and a Spanish company. The American Cheetah Girls are in Barcelona and they're singing about ''a world united by music'' and speaking sporadic Spanish without any translation or subtitles for viewers. Ditto for the toddlers watching Handy Manny help his Spanish-speaking neighbors fix stuff with the help of his talking tools.
Is speaking Spanish, once vigorously shunned by English-only movements, becoming trendy in the United States?
''Something profound and historically significant is happening with the momentum of Spanish, and it's having an impact on the social and cultural fabric of the United States,'' says Eduardo Lago, executive director of the New York outpost of Instituto Cervantes, one of the most important cultural organizations in Spain.
Spanish is ''a fact of life,'' says Ana Roca, a Florida International University linguistics professor and a coordinator of next week's national ''Spanish in the United States Conference'' at the Biltmore Hotel in Coral Gables.
''You'll find a tremendous variety of Spanish being used in the United States today,'' Roca says. ``We used to never think of Spanish speakers in Georgia, North Carolina, but the demographics have changed, and the profile today is a lot more complicated than it used to be 25 years ago.''
A HUGE PHENOMENON
At close to 40 million people, the tremendous growth of the Hispanic population -- the country's fastest-growing linguistic minority -- and the widespread use of their native tongue isn't lost on the Spanish Motherland.
Not only are the king and queen of Spain on an official visit to South Florida -- a region hailed by linguists as a showcase of the powerful presence of Spanish -- but the prestigious Instituto Cervantes has devoted a weighty 1,200-page book to the analysis of Spanish in the United States.
In the three months since Enciclopedia del español en los Estados Unidos was published by Santillana USA, the Doral-based division of the Spanish giant, the book has sold 9,000 copies, and a second printing is under way.
The reference book offers more than 80 articles on issues such as the vast literary and theatrical productions of Miami and New York, the regional linguistic differences between Cubans, Mexicans, Puerto Ricans and Dominicans, and the future of bilingual education and Spanglish. The book dissects speech patterns, gathers copious statistics on language, culture and economics, and lists the most important players in language and culture -- including Instituto Cervantes, established by the Spanish government in 1991 to promote Spanish with outposts in Albuquerque, Seattle and Chicago.
Gathering vast amounts of historical and statistical data involved some 70 collaborators across the country and in Spain, said coordinator Humberto López Morales, secretary general of Asociación de Academias de la Lengua Española in Madrid.
''Our motivation was clear,'' López said. ``There was a lot of widespread information that was being published here and there in individual articles, but we wanted to both corroborate the facts through research and to collate it all in a tome where it could be easily accessed through the indexes.''
Certainly, Hollywood's embrace of Spanish fluency -- Woody Allen's Oscar-nominated Vicky Cristina Barcelona featured fast-paced Spanish dialogues between Penélope Cruz and Javier Bardem -- has had an impact on the mainstream acceptance of Spanish. But some of the most significant recognition of the last decade has come from the publishing industry.
Spain's major publishers have outposts in Doral, and most major U.S. publishers now also publish books in Spanish. A hard sell many years ago, many prominent daily newspapers in Florida, Texas, New York and California publish Spanish-language editions in print and online. Add to this dozens of independent magazines and literary supplements published in Spanish all over the United States, with their print and online versions available worldwide.
''The literary production is tremendous,'' says Gerardo Piña Rosales, the New York-based director of Academia Norteamericana de la Lengua Española (ANLE), the American arm of the Spanish Academy, and author of various essays in the book.
The official recognition by Spain of U.S. Spanish speakers is quite meaningful in the academic world.
''It's an acknowledgement not only of what has been happening demographically, but of the cultural contributions U.S. Hispanics have been making for many, many years in literature, the media, film, documentary, dance, theater,'' says Uva de Aragón, a Miami poet, essayist and novelist who's also associate director of the Cuban Research Institute at FIU.
ACROSS THE COUNTRY
South Florida's vast Spanish-language culture is featured prominently in the enciclopedia. But consider these telling snippets about the prevalence of Spanish elsewhere: New York Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg takes weekly lessons in conversational Spanish from a Colombian tutor who comes to City Hall. More than 50 years after its Broadway premiere, West Side Story is returning in a bilingual production. Much of the singing and speaking is in Spanish. The musical was performed last December in Washington, D.C., to good reviews. One critic called Arthur Laurent's decision to translate dialogue and songs to Spanish ``a stroke of genius.''
Are the Spanish reconquering America?
''I wouldn't go so far,'' says Piña, and his colleagues agree.
The shortcomings are still many: Hispanics are worried that the new generation is not speaking Spanish well, or not speaking it at all. Americans don't consider speaking a second language important enough to devote funding to quality bilingual education.
''I don't subscribe to the view that English is overwhelming and that it will overpower Spanish and make people forget the mother tongue,'' Lago says. ``The momentum of Spanish is unstoppable, the numbers tell the story -- but I don't think a triumphant posture is appropriate.''
But what's certain, linguists says, is that a significant social evolution is taking place.
''The public needs to realize that Spanish was the first European language used in what is now the United States,'' Roca says. ``It was used in the 1500s, preceding the English-speaking colonizers who went to New England. Before them, we had Spanish-speaking colonizers in Florida.''
As for the king and queen of Spain, they're reigning over the ''¡Viva España!'' theme of The Food Network's South Beach Wine & Food Festival, described by organizers as ``an unprecedented tribute to the wines and foods of Spain.''
The Enciclopedia del español en los Estados Unidos was presented to the king and queen last fall at the annual dinner the monarchy hosts to celebrate the Oct. 12 discovery of the Americas.
The queen, who spent a great deal of time looking through her copy during the dinner, asked who was responsible for the project. (It was Lago's idea after he received a copy of a similar encyclopedia about Spanish in the world, and the United States got ''a measly'' 10 pages -- but he wasn't at the dinner.)
Someone pointed at López, project coordinator. The queen applauded.
''She dedicated an applause to me!'' López says. ``I couldn't have been a happier.''
But, he added, ``más le vale.''
Serves her well.
Spain may be the Motherland, but it's only the fourth-largest Spanish-speaking country in the world, he noted.
''The future of the language is in the United States,'' López said. ``It's No. 2 now, but without a doubt, in 10 to 15 years, it will be No. 1.''
Source: The Miami Herald
The United States is the world's second-largest Spanish-speaking country, surpassed in the number of Spanish speakers only by Mexico, and to measure the influence of Spanish in contemporary mainstream America one need only to channel-surf.
On public television, there's Gwyneth Paltrow on a ride through the Catalonian countryside in a convertible, showing off her considerable Spanish vocabulary to chef Mario Batali, who's not bad himself. Paltrow says she's made learning Spanish a priority for daughter Apple. She buys DVDs in Spanish, and ''Dora, la exploradora'' is Apple's favorite cartoon character.
''Per-r-r-r-fecto,'' Paltrow says, demonstrating her deftness at rolling her r.
On another channel, the preteen generation is also speaking Spanish in a joint movie production between Disney and a Spanish company. The American Cheetah Girls are in Barcelona and they're singing about ''a world united by music'' and speaking sporadic Spanish without any translation or subtitles for viewers. Ditto for the toddlers watching Handy Manny help his Spanish-speaking neighbors fix stuff with the help of his talking tools.
Is speaking Spanish, once vigorously shunned by English-only movements, becoming trendy in the United States?
''Something profound and historically significant is happening with the momentum of Spanish, and it's having an impact on the social and cultural fabric of the United States,'' says Eduardo Lago, executive director of the New York outpost of Instituto Cervantes, one of the most important cultural organizations in Spain.
Spanish is ''a fact of life,'' says Ana Roca, a Florida International University linguistics professor and a coordinator of next week's national ''Spanish in the United States Conference'' at the Biltmore Hotel in Coral Gables.
''You'll find a tremendous variety of Spanish being used in the United States today,'' Roca says. ``We used to never think of Spanish speakers in Georgia, North Carolina, but the demographics have changed, and the profile today is a lot more complicated than it used to be 25 years ago.''
A HUGE PHENOMENON
At close to 40 million people, the tremendous growth of the Hispanic population -- the country's fastest-growing linguistic minority -- and the widespread use of their native tongue isn't lost on the Spanish Motherland.
Not only are the king and queen of Spain on an official visit to South Florida -- a region hailed by linguists as a showcase of the powerful presence of Spanish -- but the prestigious Instituto Cervantes has devoted a weighty 1,200-page book to the analysis of Spanish in the United States.
In the three months since Enciclopedia del español en los Estados Unidos was published by Santillana USA, the Doral-based division of the Spanish giant, the book has sold 9,000 copies, and a second printing is under way.
The reference book offers more than 80 articles on issues such as the vast literary and theatrical productions of Miami and New York, the regional linguistic differences between Cubans, Mexicans, Puerto Ricans and Dominicans, and the future of bilingual education and Spanglish. The book dissects speech patterns, gathers copious statistics on language, culture and economics, and lists the most important players in language and culture -- including Instituto Cervantes, established by the Spanish government in 1991 to promote Spanish with outposts in Albuquerque, Seattle and Chicago.
Gathering vast amounts of historical and statistical data involved some 70 collaborators across the country and in Spain, said coordinator Humberto López Morales, secretary general of Asociación de Academias de la Lengua Española in Madrid.
''Our motivation was clear,'' López said. ``There was a lot of widespread information that was being published here and there in individual articles, but we wanted to both corroborate the facts through research and to collate it all in a tome where it could be easily accessed through the indexes.''
Certainly, Hollywood's embrace of Spanish fluency -- Woody Allen's Oscar-nominated Vicky Cristina Barcelona featured fast-paced Spanish dialogues between Penélope Cruz and Javier Bardem -- has had an impact on the mainstream acceptance of Spanish. But some of the most significant recognition of the last decade has come from the publishing industry.
Spain's major publishers have outposts in Doral, and most major U.S. publishers now also publish books in Spanish. A hard sell many years ago, many prominent daily newspapers in Florida, Texas, New York and California publish Spanish-language editions in print and online. Add to this dozens of independent magazines and literary supplements published in Spanish all over the United States, with their print and online versions available worldwide.
''The literary production is tremendous,'' says Gerardo Piña Rosales, the New York-based director of Academia Norteamericana de la Lengua Española (ANLE), the American arm of the Spanish Academy, and author of various essays in the book.
The official recognition by Spain of U.S. Spanish speakers is quite meaningful in the academic world.
''It's an acknowledgement not only of what has been happening demographically, but of the cultural contributions U.S. Hispanics have been making for many, many years in literature, the media, film, documentary, dance, theater,'' says Uva de Aragón, a Miami poet, essayist and novelist who's also associate director of the Cuban Research Institute at FIU.
ACROSS THE COUNTRY
South Florida's vast Spanish-language culture is featured prominently in the enciclopedia. But consider these telling snippets about the prevalence of Spanish elsewhere: New York Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg takes weekly lessons in conversational Spanish from a Colombian tutor who comes to City Hall. More than 50 years after its Broadway premiere, West Side Story is returning in a bilingual production. Much of the singing and speaking is in Spanish. The musical was performed last December in Washington, D.C., to good reviews. One critic called Arthur Laurent's decision to translate dialogue and songs to Spanish ``a stroke of genius.''
Are the Spanish reconquering America?
''I wouldn't go so far,'' says Piña, and his colleagues agree.
The shortcomings are still many: Hispanics are worried that the new generation is not speaking Spanish well, or not speaking it at all. Americans don't consider speaking a second language important enough to devote funding to quality bilingual education.
''I don't subscribe to the view that English is overwhelming and that it will overpower Spanish and make people forget the mother tongue,'' Lago says. ``The momentum of Spanish is unstoppable, the numbers tell the story -- but I don't think a triumphant posture is appropriate.''
But what's certain, linguists says, is that a significant social evolution is taking place.
''The public needs to realize that Spanish was the first European language used in what is now the United States,'' Roca says. ``It was used in the 1500s, preceding the English-speaking colonizers who went to New England. Before them, we had Spanish-speaking colonizers in Florida.''
As for the king and queen of Spain, they're reigning over the ''¡Viva España!'' theme of The Food Network's South Beach Wine & Food Festival, described by organizers as ``an unprecedented tribute to the wines and foods of Spain.''
The Enciclopedia del español en los Estados Unidos was presented to the king and queen last fall at the annual dinner the monarchy hosts to celebrate the Oct. 12 discovery of the Americas.
The queen, who spent a great deal of time looking through her copy during the dinner, asked who was responsible for the project. (It was Lago's idea after he received a copy of a similar encyclopedia about Spanish in the world, and the United States got ''a measly'' 10 pages -- but he wasn't at the dinner.)
Someone pointed at López, project coordinator. The queen applauded.
''She dedicated an applause to me!'' López says. ``I couldn't have been a happier.''
But, he added, ``más le vale.''
Serves her well.
Spain may be the Motherland, but it's only the fourth-largest Spanish-speaking country in the world, he noted.
''The future of the language is in the United States,'' López said. ``It's No. 2 now, but without a doubt, in 10 to 15 years, it will be No. 1.''
Source: The Miami Herald
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