Guest Column
United States Spanish Language Academy marks new milestone
- Jorge Ignacio Covarrubias
- Chairman, Information Committee
- Academia Norteamericana de la Lengua Española
- Tomás Navarro Tomás was a great linguist and philologist. Jorge Guillén won the Cervantes Prize, the Nobel Prize for Spanish literature. Ramón Sender was an outstanding exponent of literary creativity. Enrique Anderson Imbert excelled as a writer of short stories and a theoretician. Fernando Alegría was an outstanding novelist. José Ferrater Mora published a highly important Dictionary of Philosophy. All of these persons have something in common: They were members of the North American Academy of the Spanish Language (“ANLE” by its Spanish acronym) that on May 31 celebrates 34 years since its first official commemoration.
- And those illustrious names were not the only ones that have been part of ANLE, the youngest of the 22 academies of the Spanish language that together collaborate in the drafting of the Dictionary, Grammar and Spelling.
- The list is long: Rolando Hinojosa-Smith, Carlos McHale, Gumersindo Yépez, Juan Avilés, Enrique Labrador Ruiz, Rosario Rexach, Margarita Carrera and many others built the foundation so that New York would become the seat of one of only two member Academies in the world from countries whose majority language is not Spanish. The other is The Philippines.
- In our Academy, says its director Gerardo Piña Rosales, who was elected unanimously to succeed the late inspirational co-founder Odón Betanzos Palacios, “…creators have always excelled. Poets and storytellers, those for whom words are always foremost, collaborate actively in all the initiatives of our organization.”
- The Academy was incorporated on November 5, 1973, but could not celebrate its birth until six months later.
- The writer and university professor, Eugenio Chang-Rodríguez, a member of the Academy and editor of its newsletter, recalls that “the founding of ANLE was celebrated in the conference room of the New York Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters on May 31, 1974.
- The following day, the first plenary session took place, and the body elected its first board of directors, led by the director, Carlos McHale. On March 5, 1975, the by-laws of he Academy were approved, “following the model of the Royal Spanish Academy’s general guidelines.”
- In addition to its formal establishment in 1974, the other key event in ANLE’s history was the VIII Congress of the Association of Academies of the Spanish Language. Meeting in Lima, Peru on April 21-26, 1980, the Association welcomed ANLE into its family.
- “Odón Betanzos and I represented ANLE,” recalls Chang-Rodríguez. “Our arguments persuaded Dámaso Alonso, president of the Royal Academy, to write the draft resolution that was approved and ratified. That act was met with applause. In 1980, on being admitted as the twenty-second member of the Association of Academies of the Spanish Language, our group became an official (“corresponding”) member of the Royal Academy.
- Since then, ANLE has participated actively in each successive congress and other meetings of the Association of Academies, including the most recent in March 2007 in Cartagena and Medellín, in Colombia. In the former, city of corsairs and legend, the world of Spanish letters honored Gabriel García Márquez. ANLE is now preparing to participate in the Congress in Chile in 2010.
- ANLE’s grammar committee is headed by Joaquín Segura, also the editor of our newsletter, Glosas. He is busy as a contributor to the final touches of the Nueva Gramática de la Lengua Española (New Grammar of the Spanish Language) that will be published early next year, the first official grammar guide since 1931. It is destined to be a monumental work, the collective product of the 22 Academies. In addition, ANLE helped to produce the Diccionario Panhispánico de Dudas (Pan-Hispanic Dictionary of Doubts) and many other publications.
- Gerardo Piña-Rosales, a writer and professor who took the helm of ANLE in January of this year, has reinvigorated the academy’s efforts. ANLE serves the second largest Spanish-speaking community in the world, after Mexico, with some 45 million souls in the United States who speak the language of Cervantes. He has revitalized the committees on grammar, lexicography, information, literary studies, information science, education, translation, Hispanic presence in the United States, Spanish language studies in the United States, and medical vocabulary, all soon to be joined by a public relations committee.
- ANLE is celebrating its anniversary with the inauguration of its website on which it will soon unveil an ambitious program of activities to serve the millions of Spanish-speakers in the United States interested in maintaining the quality of their beautiful, universal language.
- On the Internet:
- ANLE: www.anle.us
- Video with interview to Gerardo Piña Rosales and other ANLE members: http://www.youtube.com/VIDEOSANLE
- Jorge Ignacio Covarrubias
- Chairman, Information Committee
- Academia Norteamericana de la Lengua Española
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