Spanish+Royal+Language+Academy

By DANIEL WOOLLS, Associated Press Writer

MADRID – Can a Barcelona truck driver be expected to speak like a Buenos Aires banker? Can rules be imposed on a language spoken by 400 million people stretching from Madrid to Manila?

More than 500 years after Spaniards first set out to colonize distant lands, guardians of Spanish from 22 countries have finally drawn up joint rules for a language spoken by more than 500 million people.

Spain's Royal Language Academy (RAE) appointed itself custodian of the Spanish language over three centuries ago and has affiliates in every Spanish-speaking country, but has long been felt to ignore how millions actually communicate between Tijuana and Tierra del Fuego in Latin America.

The fruit of their toil is a nearly 4,000-page tome in two volumes presented Thursday, with yet another to come out next year.

It was produced by the Spanish Royal Academy and 21 sister organizations in Latin America and other countries where Spanish is spoken, such as the United States and the Philippines, and has taken them 11 years to compile.

The book is billed as a sort of linguistic map that painstakingly documents today's Spanish in all its richness — there are nearly 20 ways to say ballpoint pen, for instance — and how it varies from country to country, or within one, and even from one social class to another.

Indeed, while English speakers face the 'you-say-tomato, I-say-tomahto' dilemma, Spanish is also chock full of variety in pronunciation, vocabulary and the ways sentences are constructed.

The biggest difference from the existing grammar, which dates back to 1931, is that the new book reflects how the language is spoken where most Spanish-speakers live: Latin America.

In Puerto Rico, for example, it acknowledges — and respects — the fact that subject and verb in a question are often switched around to an order resembling that of English. So the question "Adonde vas tu?" — where are you going? — becomes "Adonde tu vas?" in the U.S. territory.

"The new grammar book is inclusive because Spanish is inclusive," Ignacio Bosque, lead editor of the new book, said after the launch. "It would be a good idea to let ourselves be enriched by variety, that is one of the book's aims."

The first two volumes covering 4,000 pages of morphology and syntax went on sale in bookshops across Spain last Friday, but will have to wait until the New Year to appear in Latin America.

"The fact we know that in such a country this and that is said is an extraordinary achievement which tears down barriers to mutual understanding," said Humberto Lopez Morales, from Puerto Rico, who is secretary-general of the Association of Spanish Language Academies.

A third volume of the grammar, on phonetics and phonology, will come out within a few months, along with a DVD showing variations in the pronunciation, tone and rhythms of Spanish as it is spoken across different linguistic zones.

Those reluctant to part with 120 euros ($176.5) for the new grammar will have to wait until autumn 2010 for a paperback version.

Publishers Espasa say the new book has "been received with great enthusiasm," but have declined to give figures for sales or print runs.

For some academics who collaborated in the project, unity amongst Spanish speakers was needed to preserve the language itself.

"Never has it (Spanish) been under such threat, from information technology, from the economy, or from English," said Blas Bruni, a member of the Venezuelan Academy.

The new grammar book does not attempt to set cut-and-dry dogma on what is correct and what is not, making instead recommendations as to what the language gurus generally accept to be proper Spanish.

(Writing by Martin Roberts, editing by Paul Casciato)