I started my formal study of the Spanish language two years ago. But I have quite a history with the language that begins almost from birth. When I was about 18 months old my family moved to Central America, where we stayed for a good number of years. I learned to speak Spanish and English at the same time. I picked it up organically, meaning I did not study it. I did not learn to conjugate, I did not learn what an indirect object was...I just learned how to speak and I learned to speak fluently and like a native. But then we moved back to the U.S. and I refused to speak a word of Spanish because no one wants to be the odd kid who speaks another language. That lasted for a long time. Almost 20 years. And then I met B and Spanish was back in my life. This time I picked up words and phrases from him. Ones that I heard repeated a lot. Still no idea how a verb was conjugated or how to put a sentence together but I could tell you that something was sucio (dirty) or asco (disgusting). After the girls were born I learned bit more - no se toca (don't touch), siéntate (sit down), cálmate (calm down) and a few more. We did have little kids after all...
My actual, formal lessons began in earnest when we moved here. And I think I have done ok. I was even feeling a bit smug as I finished my first post in Spanish. Ok, so I was able to take some time in writing it. Going back to correct mistakes. (It is so much easier to write than to speak. When you are speaking, you have to conjugate on the fly. You have to think ahead and hope you have all the words at your disposal to be able to finish the sentence you started. You have to be comfortable stopping mid-sentence, realize that you don't have all the words you need to finish that sentence, and then start all over again. Maybe more than once to just get one thought across.) I am getting pretty good these days and less and less often I fumble around for the right words. I really thought I was getting a handle on it.
And then they went and changed the alphabet.
Soak that in for a minute.
They. Changed. The. Alphabet.
Yep, just dropped a few letters out of the alphabet completely since they felt they were a bit redundant. Changed the pronunciation of a couple more. They changed when some words are capitalized and where the accent can and cannot be placed on others. There was a laundry list of changes published and I was not very excited to learn about any of them. Who would be? I had just spent two years learning the rules and now they are going to change them? Nope, uh uh, no way. Who do I appeal this to?
The answer - the Real Acedemia Española (Spanish Royal Academy). They are the governing body of the Spanish language. But I don't think they would care about what my little issues and I think they are a bit more versed in the nuances of the language (any language) than I. At least I hope so...
Founded in 1713 their mission is to keep the Castilian language unified. (If you have been to Spain, Argentina or Chile - you will know that they have failed in keeping Spanish speakers to one voice...oh, the accents that even I can differentiate.) They have 46 members, each of whose only job is to keep pure and in true voice their singular letter of the alphabet. Yep, they each have one letter that they are responsible for and even then it is only the uppercase or the lowercase, not both. The latest letter opening is for the silla B (seat for letter B). If you have ever been on Sesame Street when B was the letter of the day you may have a chance but probably not. The members elected are usually prolific and famous writers, historians, and important persons from the arts and sciences. Oh, and they have to be native Spanish speakers so that would get me left off the short list pretty quickly. The voting process is long and the seats are hard won but once you have a seat at the Academy, it is for life. Unless you are the letters ch, ll and rr. Then your job ended with the latest changes...
Oh, about those last changes, posted about a year ago (but that I was just informed of last week) are as follows (just in case you need to brush up):
- The letters 'ch' and 'll' and 'rr' (which is different from r) have been eliminated from the alphabet. {Good to know I am not going crazy because I swear I learned them as a kid and now my kids think I am weird when we sing the alphabet song and I use them...}
- The pronunciation of the letter y will change from i-griega to ye (or yay). V will go from vay to uve and W from doble vay to uve doble. {I kinda get these changes. B and V sound exactly - e.x.a.c.t.l.y.- the same in Spanish. Makes it hard to make the distinction when spelling something. Something like, oh, I don't know, like my last name. Now instead of having to say vay chica - which is v - I can say uve. If, and only if, that person has read the RAE guidlines. BTW - vay grande is B.}
- o (which means or) will no longer have a tilde, or accent, mark. Well, of course except...There are rules to the rules and I didn't understand them all.
- Terms that come before proper nouns - ex. Gulf of Mexico - will now not be capitalized In Spanish it will now be written gulf of Mexico.
- The ex-, anti- or pro- that precedes the noun, ex. - ex-wife, ex-president, pro-human rights -no longer becomes hyphenated. They will be considered one word.
And on, and on, and on... If you would like to see all the rule changes, click here. As for me, I think it will take this old goat a while to remember that they have changed the pronunciation of y, much less any of the other rules.
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