Foundation of Urgent Spanish

The Foundation of Urgent Spanish 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 the Agency EFE.

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 language. Other primary main objectives of the Foundation include:

* To promote good usage of Spanish in all communication media, including but not limited to, the printed press, radio, television, and internet
* To provide uniform criteria in the usage of Spanish
* To respond quickly to the doubts of the language through its inquiry service
* To devise linguistic reports on new difficulties that arise in the Spanish language and to diffuse them
* To publish and update the Manual of Urgent Spanish, which serves as a form of dictionary for the Agency EFE
* To send 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 correct phrases and words in Spanglish that have begun to pollute the language. For example, here reads an example of the Manual:

“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 ‘jour 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” (the varying regionalistic ways that the letters ‘s’, ‘c’ and ‘z’ may be pronounced), the Manual of Urgent Spanish says:

“el 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 launched Wikilengua, a webpage 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 webpapge. 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. It is not necessary to register with the website in order to view Wikilengua. Furthermore, it is not necessary to register to make observations, critiques, or proposals on the comment pages. 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 collaborates with la Fundéu-BBVA, la Real Academia Española, Cervantes Institute, CNN in Spanish, National Radio of Spain, Spanish Television, Telecinco, the Aragon Herald, The Catalunya Newspaper, etc, and is licensed under Creative Commons, the recommended formula by the organization “Creative Commons for Wikis”.

References

Morales, Humberto Lopez. Globalizacion Del Lexico Hispanico. Madrid: Espasa Calpe Mexicana, S.A., 2007.

* http://www.fundeu.es/
* http://www.wikilengua.org/index.php/Portada
* http://creativecommons.org/license/results-one?license_code=by-sa&wiki=true
* http://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fundaci%C3%B3n_del_Espa%C3%B1ol_Urgente
* http://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agencia_EFE

External links

* http://www.fundeu.es/
* http://www.wikilengua.org/index.php/Portada
* http://www.rae.es/
* http://www.efe.com/esurgente/lenguaes/
* http://www.elcastellano.org/libresti.html